It Will Not Last The Night
by Defying.Expectations
Summary: AU. Toddvett/Sweenett. What if Sweeney and Nellie's motives were reversed? What if the barber had been driven by love and the baker by revenge?
1. Another Day

**A/N:** For fanfic50, prompt forty-five, morph.

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><p><em>My candle burns at both its ends;<br>It will not last the night;  
>But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends –<br>It gives a lovely light. – Edna Saint Vincent Millay_

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><p>"And how does today find you, sir?" Sweeney Todd questions in his perfected tone of amiability as he slips the barber bib around his customer's neck.<p>

"Quite well, thanks," says the man – Sweeney's already forgotten his name – as he relaxes into the chair. "Secured the managerial deal I wanted today. Now I can return to Plymouth within the night."

"You don't reside in London?"

"Nope. Just here for business."

Sweeney slides open his razor and bestows a smile upon the blade. She returns the smile and throws him an intimate wink of silver.

"I'm quite looking forward to returning to my wife," the customer continues, closing his eyes and tipping his head back, settling further into the contours of the barber chair, already perfectly at ease within the mouth of death. "Haven't seen her in well over two weeks. My line of work keeps me away from home a lot, see . . ."

The man's words continue to pour forth from his lips, but Sweeney does not continue to listen. He's heard all that he needs to know. Watching the distorted reflection of his face within the blade's surface – two smears for lips, a smudge for a nose, black hollows for eyes – he nears the customer in two steps.

"This is for you, my love," he whispers.

". . . and Betty is terribly fond of – what?" says the man, opening one eye to peer drowsily at Sweeney. "What's this for – and who are you – "

The razor descends and rips into the man's throat, separating layers of skin and sinew. Liberated from the confines of the body at last, the precious rubies spill over the blade and across the torn tendons and down his hand, his chair, his floor in a glorious rain storm.

"It's for her," explains Sweeney in a voice no more than a breath as he comes around to the other side of the chair. "Each sacrifice is for her – the only thing worth living for."

The customer gurgles and gasps, body spasming, crimson liquid dripping, eyelids twitching. The tattered second mouth now gaping at his neck shifts, its bloodied lips trembling, as it drawls a reply:

"_She doesn't notice. She doesn't care."_

Sweeney winces and presses his own lips together in a merciless line, as though this will prevent the gaping mouth of sinews from speaking further the thoughts that he always firmly drives away.

But the torn and bloodied strips of the neck release a laugh that bounces and echoes against the walls a million times over, making his ears ring and his chest vibrate.

"_Why don't you just admit it?"_

He shakes his head, wildly, loose movements sweeping his skull side to side with such violence he fears he might forge a second mouth for himself as well.

The laughs mount in volume and frequency, the mouth widening, grin broadening, and the lips snarl with savage delight:

"_Admit it, Todd. Admit it. _Admitit_."_

Sweeney stomps on the foot petal and the grotesque mouth, along with its owner, drop away into the bakehouse. He lifts his foot and the chair snaps back into place, the trapdoor returning and obscuring the body from view.

The laughs still reverberate in his walls; the smile still sears against his eyelids.

Swallowing rising bile, Sweeney prowls over to the window; the floor at this spot is so well tread on that some days he fears it'll wear right through and he'll topple into her shop. The familiar location soothes him: his breathing normalizes, his head clears. His purpose returns.

He scours the scene below with narrowed eyes: disgusting humans strolling the streets, selling their wares, extolling her pies.

Will he be lucky enough to receive another cretin for the altar tonight? Will he be able to offer her two sacrificial lambs this evening? The mere thought sets his skin tingling. She would appreciate it so . . .

His breath snags in his throat as he catches sight of her below. She shines as clear and distinct as his razor beneath the moonlight.

And infinitely more beautiful.

Her crimson tresses bob amidst the masses as she moves about, serving pies, collecting coins, chatting up customers.

Anger bubbles within him that she has to associate with these hordes. They are not worthy of her attention, her time, her devotion . . . but of course, it is necessary . . . yes, unfortunately necessary . . . how else is she to sell these pies, after all? How else is she to earn a living? How else are the both of them – and a cold but pleasant shiver runs down his spine, for that is what she whispers to him in the dark as she trails hot fingers along his spine, _both, us, we, together, you and me_ – to achieve their goal?

He stares at her, tracking her sweeping movements with his eyes, trusting that she will look up and meet his gaze. Trusting that she will know he is, as always, looking. Trusting that she will know he needs her to look in return.

It seems to last an eternity, his waiting for her to look – but she has taught him how to wait, and oh, she has taught him well – and at long last, she does.

His heart leaps to his throat and pounds like a young drummer boy fascinated by his new responsibility, quick and eager and arrhythmic, his announcement of war. His prelude to an execution.

She extends him a crooked, cursory smile. It disappears from her face within the next second as she spins to greet a new customer, the barber above her shop already further from her mind than the moon.

He presses his face against the window pane, crushing his nose against the glass and fogging it with his breath, eyes pursuing her long into the night. She may have turned away from him, but he will never be able to drink his fill of her.

Each sacrifice is made in her name.

And Sweeney Todd can pretend as long as he likes, but she is indifferent to every single one.

xxx

_Scuff, scuff, scuff, thud, thud, thud, thud, thud, snick, thud, thud, thud . . ._

Pacing. It's a ritual. Hearing her footsteps against the ground, the way the cadence changes as her boots come in contact with smooth pavement or wooden boards or cobbled stones or bakehouse stairs or matted carpet; feeling the muscles in her thighs and calves strain then untense, the joint of her knee swinging out then in; letting the rhythmic vibrations in her feet travel up her spine and attempt to numb her aching, spinning, twisting mind.

Pacing is a metronome of comfort, one that she has no plans of relinquishing anytime soon.

_Thud, thud, thud,_ the tattoo of boots striking stone stairs as she climbs back up the steps ascending from the bakehouse, a freshly-heated tray of pies in hand.

_Snnnnick thud-thud,_ the lyric created as shoes slip on a small puddle of blood and stumble to catch the rest of her body.

_Scuff, scuff, scuff, scuff, scuff, _the ditty of feet grazing the floor of the pie shop as she makes her way back outside.

_Crunch, crunch, crack, _the tune of thick heels marching and turning upon gravel as she greets her customers, serves her pies, babbles about everything she's not thinking about, laughs at their jokes, shoves smiles upon her face.

_Crunch, crunch, crunch, scrape . . . crunch, whack, scuff . . . scuff, scuff, scuff, scuff . . . thud, thud, thud._

The strange notes of her feet somehow soothe her; the discordant minuets somehow become concordant when joined together in song.

But soon, as always, the drumbeat of her feet fails to drown out all else. Soon, as always, it becomes the undulation of her thoughts, giving them a meter to pound against in her head, underscoring them, accenting them, crescendoing them.

_Thud._

Another day gone by.

_Thud. _

She pauses on each step to the bakehouse this time, lets each pulsation rumble in the ground and her limbs before taking the next one.

_Thud._

Another day gone by without him.

_Thud._

Another day.

_Thud. Thud. Thud._

Again. Again. Again.

_Thud, boom, scrape, scrape, scrape, _her feet chorus as she takes the last step then ventures towards the oven to heat another tray of pies.

He is never going to come. He is never going to come and he is never going to look into her eyes to see her for who she truly is rather than who he believes her to be and she is never going to get what she needs.

_Scrape, scrape, scrape._

She needs to learn to stop dreaming for what cannot be.

But without dreams, what is she? What else does she have to cling to? The pies? The boy? The faded memories that she still remembers but can no longer see?

_Scrape._

The tray slips sideways in her grasp. A scalding hot pie tumbles off and presses against her fingertips before falling to the floor. Swearing, she kneels to pick up the pie, then tosses it in the furnace and watches it crumble to ashes.

She supposes she could have fed that pie to her customers and not have had trouble, but does not want to risk it. Londoners are very observant when it comes to dirt. Likely they would call her out on why there was grime upon their food. Yes, soot upon the surface of their pie would draw their eye; human flesh stuffed within the pie, however, would slip by without a second glance.

Her upper lip curls.

_Fools._

_Thud, thud, thud,_ as she returns up the steps of the bakehouse. _Scuff, scuff, scuff, _across the wooden floor of her shop. _Crunch, crunch, crunch, _along the gravel in the eatery arena.

She dons the well-worn mask of amiable hostess as she slips again into the familiar routine of greeting, serving, babbling, laughing, shoving smiles upon her face –

"_Witch! Witch!"_

Her heart valves close.

No. Not her. Not tonight. Not now.

Not her.

Her heart valves are sealed. Her blood glaciates in her veins.

_Please,_ she prays to the God she doesn't believe in, _please don't let her come._

But even if He did exist, He could not answer Nellie's prayers: Lucy Barker is already here.

"_Witch! Witch! Witch!"_

With one gasping breath, Nellie commands her body to yield to her orders: her heart valves burst open and blood gushes forth through her entire being, the force of it nearly knocking her off her feet.

Face crumpling into a ferocious scowl, she shrieks, _"Toby! Throw the old woman out!"_

But Toby, for whatever reason, isn't around. Nellie must deal with the mad woman herself.

She follows her ears towards the entrance of her shop, where the shrill endless cry of _"witch! witch! witch!"_ seems to be coming from, seizing a dish towel on her way. Lucy stands in the doorway, hanging onto the frame, clawing at it with jagged nails, slowly sliding down to the floor all the while. It reminds Nellie of a baby monkey she saw once as a young girl during a rare visit to the zoo, a feeble little creature unable to climb a tree on its own.

"You old hag," cries Nellie, flicking the dish towel at Lucy, who crows and cowers even though the fabric barely touches her. "Get out."

"Witch! No heart, not a bit of a heart!" screams Lucy, continuing to slump to the ground. Her eyes roll in her skull, never lighting on one subject for long, but when they fleeting latch onto Nellie's gaze, the baker's heart threatens to close up again.

Nellie's lips tremble as she hammers through a constricted throat, _"Get out of my shop."_

Lucy's knees hit the ground. She throws the rest of herself down upon the dusty floor in a position reminiscent of prayer and grasps Nellie's skirts. "Have a heart, dear," she brays, "try for a bit of a heart!"

Nellie knows she should rip herself away from Lucy, slap the dish towel in her face, throw her out before someone sees. But what she knows can't stop her from denying what she feels. It's something she's normally very good at, rebuffing the truth, and it's something she's still very good at – but there is no one watching, not in the shop and not in the streets, and she can't see any reason to hide just now.

So she sinks to the floor beside Lucy, skirts pooling around her, not trying to conceal the trembling in her lips this time.

"Oh, Lucy, don't you see?" she whispers. "I know you don't see, I know you can't see – but just once, can't you try to believe that this is all for you? That everything I do is for you?"

Nellie reaches for Lucy's hands, but Lucy pulls back before their fingers can brush.

"No pity in the witch's heart," Lucy yelps, scrabbling to her feet and retreating slowly into the night, eyes no longer roving but fixed directly upon Nellie. "No pity, never any pity – Devil's wife, she is – a house of pure evil if there ever was one!"

Each word from her deranged mouth is a dagger of ignorance, a stab to the chest that understands nothing and means nothing.

A wound that hurts more than logic should allow.

Nellie screams, _"Get out of here."_

But Lucy is already gone.

Nellie's pie tray is empty and she still has an hour to go until closing. She'll have to go fetch more.

She rises to her feet and begins to recreate her metronome.

_Scuff, scuff, scuff, thud, thud, thud, thud, thud, snick, thud, thud, thud . . ._

Pacing. It's the only thing that can quell her thoughts, her vulturine ruminations that circle round and round. Even the drums of her feet against the ground, however, can only slightly soften rather than stop the drums of her vengeance against brain.

But this drumbeat all she has.

Bloodied dreams and pacing footsteps. This is what her life comes down to.

And vengeance. Pure, sweet vengeance.

_Justice._

So she keeps pacing.

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><p><strong>AN: **Reviews are love.


	2. My Faithful Friend

_One year earlier._

xxx

When Sweeney enters her shop, the world stops spinning.

From beneath lids shadowed with flour and fatigue, her eyes collide with his own.

"A customer," she breathes, and just like that the world is revolving again, frantically and ferociously, unable to rotate fast enough to make up for those lost seconds. His legs stumble, unable to support his body on this ground slanting beneath his feet and turning the whole Earth into a merry-go-round –

"Wait!" she cries out, stabbing the knife she'd been using into her cutter board and bustling over towards him. Her skirts swish against the floor and stir up months of dust; hers lips canter in a string of words he can't understand; her arms stretch out to him as his feet continue to flail against a ground moving too quickly –

Her hands close around his shoulders and push him into a seat. His legs fold obediently beneath him.

She resumes her work at the counter, chopping this, stabbing that, rolling this, prodding that. Her mouth continues forming syllables, but he can't distinguish the words: they meld together in one continuous note. One beautiful note that blissfully strangles him.

Fifteen years.

It's a nice number, easily counted and distributed, evenly divisible by five and three. It sounds so simple to the ears.

_Fifteen years. _

Its simplicity can't begin to convey its reality: the festering blisters in the crevices of skin; the brutality of the endless, heartless ocean swallowing him on all sides; the piercing screams of the guards in the harsh daylight or – a thousand times worse – the thundering silence of the prisoners in their cells at night; the flesh torn from bodies by sun and brawls and whips; the hopeless hope as exquisite as the faded imprint of wine upon the tongue, no longer remembered yet still yearned for.

The hopeless hope that – by mere miracle – _no_ – by mere love – kept him going.

She kept him going. The faded but burning imprint of wine upon his tongue.

His eyes feast upon her as she moves about the room, afraid to look away or even blink lest she disappear and leave him with only his blurred conjugation of her. But she continues to be there, rushing about the room and making her pies and flooding his eardrums with her psalm, and he finally trusts in her reality enough to force his watering, staring eyes to blink.

This fifteen year interim has not been kind to her either, that much is plain. The creases of her face have deepened; the porcelain skin roughened, the rosy cheeks paled; the bright eyes muted, no longer blindly trusting of the world. She is haggard, weary.

She has never looked more beautiful.

Her brambly edges give a grace and maturity she never possessed before. Her hardened body radiates pain, yet understanding. She knows first-hand how bruising and careless life can be – but she emerged victorious from the fight and holds no plans to ever give in.

She is like him.

"Hello? D'you hear me?"

She stands in front of him, bending over, fingers rapping on the table to catch his attention.

He blinks and looks at her.

"I asked if you'd like a tumbler of gin instead," she says, raising one eyebrow. "It takes a lot more than ale to wash out the taste of them pies. Trust me, I know. C'mon, love."

She glides into the parlor; he follows her like a sheep after its master, blindly docile and endlessly faithful.

Neither of these traits is lost on Nellie Lovett.

She trains her eyes upon the gin flagon as she pours them both generous glasses. She suspects, she thinks, she knows it must be –

_No._

She must confirm before she does anything rash.

Before she can plot how best to approach the subject, he speaks:

"Isn't that a room up there over the shop?" His voice is rusty and the syllables scratch against his throat. "If times're so hard, why don't you rent it out? Ought to bring in – something."

"Oh, up there?" she replies with a cursory glance to the ceiling, handing him his glass. "No one'll go near it." She shifts her eyes back to him to discover that his eyes have never left hers. Pretending not to be unsettled by this, she takes a seat in her armchair, regarding him with deliberate disinterest. "People think it's haunted."

"Haunted?" he echoes, sinking into the cushions of another chair.

"Yeah. Y'see, years ago, something happened up there. Something not very nice."

She settles herself further into the armchair, allowing herself to get cozy, acting as though she doesn't feel his eyes scalding her body. If this is Benjamin Barker – and she can't think who else it would be – he's changed, and not just physically. The Benjamin Barker of fifteen years ago never stared at her. The Benjamin Barker of fifteen years ago was a shy young thing with a naïve smile that always lingered just a bit too long in his landlady's direction than befit a married man. The Benjamin Barker of fifteen years ago could never even consider being unfaithful to his wife, yet blindly wore his misplaced lust on his sleeve all the while.

The Benjamin Barker of fifteen years ago was too much of a ignorant fool to hold such an intensity in his dark eyes.

Yes, he's changed – he's colder and harder . . . but possibly it is a change for the better.

Possibly it is a change to her advantage.

"There was a barber and his wife," says Nellie, and she can no longer brim her voice with that same practiced nonchalance of before, "and she – she was beautiful . . ."

He leans towards her, his hands on his knees, starved for her words.

So she tells him the tale he already partly knows: of his life with Lucy, of his deportation to Australia. Her voice begins to trip over the chapters he's not yet read: of the judge's persistence, of Lucy being raped, of the descent into darkness. . . .

_Fifteen years._

That's how long it's been. That's how long she's been trying and failing and trying and failing and she keeps on dreaming that one day, some day, these tries will succeed, but sometimes she no longer knows why she keeps bothering to delude herself –

"Where's Lucy?" he whispers to her, breaking her from her reverie. He sits in the same attitude he's been for her entire story: shoulders hunched to his ears, hands digging into his knees. He perches so close to the edge of the chair that it's a miracle he hasn't toppled to the floor. "Where's my wife?"

"She poisoned herself," whispers Nellie, the pain in her voice as real and unpracticed as the way her fingers are biting into her palms and her heart seizing in her chest. "Arsenic. From the apothecary 'round the corner."

She doesn't know precisely why she doesn't reveal to him that Lucy survived her suicide attempt, but her instincts say she must not reveal it, and she places full trust in her instincts: they have never steered her wrong before.

Certainly, Nellie knows that Lucy is beyond help. Just as certainly, she knows that Benjamin would try and help her until his dying day. He may not love his wife, but his loyalty to her is unquestionable; it's what kept him from beginning an affair, or being cruel to her, or just walking out the door. If she tells him that Lucy is alive, he will pick up right where he left off fifteen years ago. If she tells him that Lucy is alive, he will no longer be devoted to Nellie, and history will merely repeat itself.

"I tried to stop her, but she wouldn't listen to me," she adds, desperate to make him believe that she did all she could – more desperate to make herself believe it.

Because she did. She does. But that can't stop the guilt, the self-loathing, the feeling that she could have done more, should still do more . . .

What more is to be done, though? Benjamin Barker may have been trapped in Botany Bay for the past fifteen years, but Nellie Lovett has been no less trapped in London. Trapped by her guilt, trapped by her pain. Trapped by the fact that, no matter what she does, she can't get to that bastard.

It's not for lack of trying. She's tried – oh, _Jesus_, has she tried. Mercury mixed with his wine; arsenic sprinkled upon his fish; thallium soaking his handkerchief; antimony showering a drippingly sentimental letter; lead nestled in a vial between her breasts, waiting to be shoved down his throat as soon as his lips ceased assaulting the bare skin of her shoulder –

And once she became so desperate that she had nearly lost all her practicality and went raging up to his house, a pistol in hand, to break down the door and finally be done with all this –

Each time, something went wrong. He did not drink it, or it was not the correct dosage for a kill, or a servant became the recipient instead . . .

Eventually, he became suspicious of her motives for constantly luring him to settle in her home or between her legs, and discontinued visiting her. He could not prove it was her, and he did not care enough to pursue the matter, so no formal action was ever taken. Nonetheless, she was stopped in her tracks. She continues to plot – of course she does, always . . . but some days, she simply does not know what more to do.

Still. Something must be done about the judge. Justice must be served.

Sweeney doesn't roar with pain when she finishes the story. He doesn't scream or rip out his hair or shake the core of the Earth with his rage. He sits. Sits and stares and feels nothing.

_Nothing._

The nothing makes him feel. The nothing makes him feel horror and rage – but not in the way it should. The horror is that he cannot feel anything for his wife being buried beneath the earth; the rage is that he damn well should feel something.

But he can't, and he doesn't, and he won't.

Because is this not better for her? After what happened to her, would she not be better off enclosed within a casket, away from the suffering and the pain? That was all he had ever brought her as her husband, even after his departure: she would be happier now.

And – and oh God, he expects God to strike him down dead in an instant for even allowing the treacherous thought to flee across his mind – and now, with Lucy shrouded in the ground, now he can truly be with the sole reason he returned to London . . .

The thought burns him from the inside out with pain, with shame. How could he think such things? He learns his wife is dead and instantly he fantasizes about another woman in her place?

But he never loved Lucy. She knew that, and he knew that, and yet neither of them ever spoke of it, for what was there to say? She did not love him either. She would not be angry with him for loving someone else, then. Likely she already knew anyway. He could almost feel her smile radiating down upon him from the heavens, giving her blessing for his happiness . . .

He casts his eyes to Nellie. She watches him with torpid eyes, lower lip sucked into her mouth.

"Fifteen years," he says, because he feels she expects him to say something but he's no longer accustomed to utilizing his vocal chords and he doesn't quite remember which sounds are acceptable, which are recommended or preferred.

He bolts to his feet and forces himself to turn away from her, because he can't remember the last time he forced himself to blink. He's probably made her nervous: staring isn't acceptable among civilized people. She's upset, there's no question about that. The retelling of the story unsettled her, stirred anger within her soul. She's more enraged than he about what Turpin did to Lucy.

The thought both touches and pains him.

And he realizes that he wants to be the one to siphon away her anger, her aches. He wants to heal her wounds, to find the salve that not only relieves the burn but reseals the skin.

_What balm could possibly accomplish that?_

"Fifteen years, sweating in a living hell on a trumped up charge," he mutters, tugging at the sleeves of his coat, because he needs something to occupy his fingers with: after fifteen years in a colony, idle hands are no longer something he knows of.

"Fifteen years dreaming I might come home to a wife and child," he says, hating the flavor of the words but forcing himself to digest them, because he cannot let her know that it is not his wife or his child that mean he is at last home . . .

He hears her skirts rustling as she stands, her boots treading as she walks. Her breathing volume increasing as she nears.

"Well, I can't say the years have been particularly kind to you, Mr. Barker – "

"No," he spits, whirling back around to face her. "That man is dead."

Because Benjamin Barker was a coward who let the only reason he had to live dance on the floor just beneath him. A coward who never had the courage to descend the stairway separating them and join her.

"It's Todd now," he whispers as a grin lights his mouth and shadows the hollows of his cheeks. "Sweeney Todd."

_And he shall earn your love, _his heart whispers in the silence.

He trails after her once more as she leads him up the staircase. The bell jingles in a sadistic mockery of joy as they step over the threshold. He ambles unseeingly towards Johanna's old crib, but turns the instant she calls his name.

She squats on the floor, patting out a rhythm with flat palms against the floorboards, until at last she hears the desired note. Dragging one of the boards free, she pulls out a box.

The world doesn't stop spinning this time, but he does have to remind himself how to breathe.

His friends . . . his old friends . . .

And she kept them for him.

"When they come for the little girl, I hid 'em," she says. "Could've sold 'em – but I didn't."

As if he needs telling, as if he does not realize, does not appreciate and admire and see. . . . All these years, she could have pawned them off, and made quite a hefty profit too.

His heart surges: could it be, is it possible, can she be –

Does she love him?

He lifts his eyes and searches her face, but she's not looking at him: she's looking at the closed box, a crease between her eyebrows. He wishes to smooth it away; he reaches out a hand towards her before remembering where they are, who he is – what he must not do – and rests his fingers against the razor case rather than her forehead.

The movement jars her. Expression neutralizing, eyes finding his with a reassuring dark twinkle, she presents him with the box. He takes it and opens the lid. He traces numb fingers over the blades, afraid he'll awaken from a dream at any moment and lose all of it – the razors, her –_ home_ – if he moves too quickly or certainly.

Holding his breath, he scoops one of his friends into his palm to warm her cold body.

And then it comes to him. The answer.

She gives it to him, his friend, his dear friend, she tells him what must be done – and he does not know how he survived fifteen years without her in his palm, guiding and supporting and cherishing him, does not know how he lived without her – but it does not matter because they are together now, and now, now –

He will kill Judge Turpin.

This is the answer. This is his salve to Nellie's open wounds. This is how he will save her.

"My," she mutters, and from his peripheral vision he sees her watching him, "them handles're chased silver, ain't they?"

"Silver?" he breathes, resisting the urge to watch her in return. "Yes."

He begins to speak to his friends, speaking to and cradling and caressing them as he cannot with her, as he hopes to one day with her. He stands and paces to the opposite end of the room, his back to her, afraid she'll see the emotion gushing like an open wound from his shaking limbs.

Nellie watches him, kneeling on the ground beside the loose floorboard, trailing his movements with hungry eyes. For, just as she trusted it was, her instinct to not tell him that Lucy lived was correct. For her instinct has grown and matured into a plan.

Her lips curl just slightly at the corners into a tender smile. She rises to her feet to join him at the other side of the room.

"I'm your friend too, Mr. Todd," she murmurs in a voice of equal parts hesitation and affection, noting when his razor lurches in a hand overcome with a brief, violent fit. Wondering if she is about to push too far, she lays a hand against his bicep. His blood undulates like sand in a storm beneath her feathery touch.

Dear God – the man's lust for her is deeper than she originally thought.

All the better.

She continues to murmur to him, and he continues to murmur to her by way of murmuring to his blade, and the both of them pretend not to hear the pledges of the other.

"You shall drip rubies," whispers Sweeney.

Nellie falls quiet, watching him curiously as he slices his blade through the air from where they both kneel upon the ground. Does he already know what she plans for him to do? Has he come to it of his own reasoning?

She'll have to be sure before she proceeds. They'll have to discuss the matter plainly. She can afford no more mistakes.

He nestles the razor in his hand, studying his reflection within the silver. The blade tilts slightly in his palm and suddenly it's her waxy face instead of his mirrored within the surface.

Sweeney hesitates, staring into her reflected eyes. Then he tilts his head just enough to peer at her corporeal face, their faces a breath apart.

She immediately begins rising to her feet; he needs to be alone, and she's pushed her boundaries enough today.

His fingers close around her wrist before she can even straighten her legs. He locks her gaze with his:

_Stay._

Keeping his fingers around her wrist and his eyes upon her own, he stands, pulling her slowly up with him. Even beneath his loose sleeves, she can see the muscles shifting beneath his skin, the sinews flexing and yielding against bone. She sees and admires the agility in the movements, the weathered resistance of his body, the capability he dominates and masters so easily.

Only when he is drawn to his full height does he break their joined gaze. His hand remains closed about her wrist, his skin cold where the glove does not cover it yet each tip pulsing with a vicious beat, fingers crafted from icicles somehow managing to house a throbbing heart.

He raises his other hand into the air, blade fisted in his grip. The expression on his face is reverent, private – and though never one to respect others' privacy, Nellie finds herself recoiling – she feels as though she is viewing a baptism of a babe not yet tainted by the world, or cracking open the spine of his heart and shamelessly scouring the pages, or intruding upon the afterglow of someone else's lovemaking –

She needs to leave.

But he still clutches her to him too tightly for escape – so she stays. Observes. Listens. Waits for she knows not what. Feels the pulse of his fingers slapping against her own far mellower beat, creating a terrible and discordant rhythm of two hearts that will never pound in tandem.

"At last," he breathes, "my right arm is complete again."

He stands a minute in this repose, blade brandished to the world that isn't watching, bathing in the unholy resplendence of his conviction.

Then his arm descends to his side and his fingers unpeel from her wrist. He kneels beside his razor box and gingerly returns the weapon to its home.

He feels the weight of her eyes upon him, again waiting for words that he does not know how to use. Swallowing, listening to the sound of spit sliding down his throat and glands pressing against his ears, he rises to his feet and turns to her. He tries desperately to make his mouth work, formulate a few syllables of comfort, convey to her his brilliant plan to take revenge upon the judge. But his jaw is unhinged from his mouth, his tongue swollen.

Eventually, she comes to his rescue:

"He's got your daughter too. Turpin, I mean. Adopted her like his own."

The daughter that she, Nellie Lovett, should have been allowed to raise. Was she not entitled to at least that bit of happiness, despite her many sins and failures? Couldn't she at least have been permitted to save that child from the cruelty of the world, even if only for a few blissful years of childhood blindness?

"You could say it was good luck for her," she somehow manages to add. "Least she didn't have to grow up in a workhouse or nothing. And Turpin's always been good to her, from what I hear, giving her all the luxury and splendor any little girl could ever want . . ."

Her words are enough to give him the reassurance and confidence necessary: his jaw reconnects, his tongue deflates, and he can tell her what he must:

"Let them quake in their boots," he hisses, not realizing his hands are quivering until he feels his fingers smacking against his thighs, "Judge Turpin and the beadle . . . for their hour – has come."

Her eyebrow raises in skepticism; her heart jumps in joy. Oh, it's almost too perfect. He's going to comply with her plot with she hardly even having to hint at it. "You mean – you're going to get 'em?"

He nods once, then, unable to bear her eyes upon him any longer, turns and strides to the window. "Yes," he murmurs to the glass panes, leaning an arm against the sill. "Yes."

She grins and licks her lips, tasting ale and stale flour and victory. She approaches him from behind, laying a hand upon each of his arms and her chin upon his shoulder, hiding her smirk in the fabric of his shirt as he trembles beneath her touch.

"Welcome home, love," she whispers in his ear.

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><p><strong>AN:** I'm thrilled that this story has received such a positive response so far. I hope you enjoy this chapter as well; I hope it was not too expository.

As always, any and all reviews are greatly appreciated.


	3. The Vermin of the World

**A/N:** I often like to lament about how the ST fandom has had a sad population decrease over the past two years. It's clear, however, that I really shouldn't lament as much as I do, considering that this fic has gotten 15 reviews and nearly 500 hits - and we're only two chapters in! It continues to shock me how many of you are still lurking around. Shock in the best possible way, of course. =)

As per usual, I hope you enjoy the chapter (and that it answers, or at least begins to answer, what just about every single one of you has asked about, bahaha).

And, also as per usual, I adore reviews of all shapes, sizes, and colors.

* * *

><p>"He's here every Thursday. Eyetalian. All the rage, he is . . ."<p>

They walk through the market. Everything around them is a whirl of color and action and noise: merchants selling their wares and customers haggling over prices, feet clobbering against stones and hems rustling over thresholds, money changing hands and entrance bells tinkling . . .

And Sweeney Todd is oblivious to it all.

Sweeney Todd is oblivious to every color and action and noise around him save for the tints of ivory skin and black fabric, for the heat of her arm knotted around his, for the cocoon of her voice.

He closes his eyes. He could drown in this moment and he would not be able to give a damn if he did.

"Mr. Todd, you fool, what the hell d'you think you're doing? How d'you ever expect to walk 'round the streets of London with your eyes shut? Maybe that worked for you down in bloody Australia – though I can't imagine how it would've – but there's far too many people and carriages and whatnot here for that strategy to succeed long, love . . ."

Sweeney opens his eyes and throws his gaze sideways to her. She's staring ahead as they walk, eyes tight and set upon their destination ahead, lips chopping together faster than his eyes can blink as she continues chiding him.

He finds the corners of his own mouth twitching as though in the beginnings of a mental fit. Panic swells within him. He's made it this long without turning insane; surely he can make it just a bit longer.

Then he realizes his mouth is trying to remember how to smile.

"Here we go," says Nellie, tugging at his arm. "He'll be here any minute now. Always says he starts at eleven, but always appears on the nose of seven past." She sneers. "Apparently, being precisely on time isn't fashionable in 'his' country."

Sweeney doesn't offer any word of acknowledgement to this; they've already silently established that he's quite disinclined to use his vocal chords, or provide a response of any kind, more than is absolutely necessary, and he doesn't want to alarm her.

His eyes roam the streets and his lip curls in disdain. Had London been this filth-ridden fifteen years ago? How had he ever thought it a place of beauty? Were it not for the woman beside him, he would already have left. As a matter of fact, he would never have returned. He would have gone far away upon his escape – stopping in London first, of course, for she is the reason he escaped – but after that, he would have promptly sailed away again.

His vision clouds over: and just what is stopping him from doing exactly that? Once he has extracted her revenge and revived her with life, why could that not be his _(our?)_ future? Not just an escape from the prison of Australia, but an escape from the prison of London . . . for, however physically unstopped they might be here, the guises of civilization are just as ensnaring as the primitive society of prison . . .

If they were free from it all . . . if they were free, and once he had liberated all the weights from her shoulders, she would not be forced to carry the burden of Lucy's plight. She would live with him in a little cottage surrounded by nothing and no one but the ocean – not because he loved the ocean, but because he remembered from fifteen years ago that she loved it. She would not be forced to work herself to her wit's end for no ultimate pay off.

She would smile at him and mean it.

His heart pounds loud and heavy and he wonders if she can hear it. Throwing her a sideways glance reveals nothing: the lines of her eyebrows and mouth are apathetic, her eyes fixed upon some point in the distance. He follows her gaze and instantly forgets all of his fantasies:

Beadle Bamford strolls through the market.

His jaw finds a determined set; his hand finds the familiar cool metal; his feet find the pavement, one step, two steps, three –

Fingers seize his forearm and halt his movement.

"Hang on," she murmurs. Her tone is as calm as ever. Only the oscillating pulse of her fingertips as they press into his flesh reveal her true temperament.

Blindly, he steps backwards, one step, two steps, three, until he stands by her side again.

Nellie frowns to herself. The man is irreversibly, pathetically rash. How such a foolish thing managed to survive in a prison colony for fifteen years is beyond her imagination. Even further beyond her imagination is how such a foolish thing managed to escape from said prison colony. Such an endeavor would require planning and care, and he's certainly never exhibited these traits around her.

The clock strikes seven minutes past and, sure enough, a young boy appears from behind the platform's velvet curtains. The boy begins to beat a drum and shout gleefully to the assembled audience.

Nellie's lip curls, but not from derision. She doesn't usually stay to watch Pirelli's lavish performances, but on the few occasions that she passes by, she's never seen this boy. His clothes are patchworked and worn; his shoes are too big, his feet sliding around in the shoes' large parameters with every step; his body is petite, fragile, emaciated fingers peeping out from beneath sagging sleeves.

Her heart pangs. Another innocent soul desecrated beyond repurification by the shit of the world. Another Lucy Barker.

Her heart pangs again and her eyes sharpen with focus, with purpose:

Perhaps this one she can save.

As the lad offers around bottles of some godawful-smelling substance that he proclaims is an elixir, she crafts her expression into one of disgust and asks Sweeney in a voice that carries across the vicinity, "Pardon me, sir, what's that awful stench?"

And just as they rehearsed, he replies, mock puzzled, "Are we standing near an open trench?"

"Are we standing near an open trench?" she echoes at the same moment he turns to the portly woman standing next to him and inquires, "Pardon me, ma'am, what's that awful stench?"

The eyes of the crowd turn towards her and Sweeney, a confused assembly of raised eyebrows, pursed mouths, and wrinkled noses. She twists her lips at them in an expression of repulsion, her soul singing. If this works – if they can establish a good reputation for Sweeney and draw in the customers – then surely, surely Turpin will return to her establishment, despite the fact that he's avoided Fleet Street like the plague for going on a dozen years now. The beadle is here, after all, so Turpin will surely hear of this – Turpin will surely know, surely come, surely, finally plunge into the bone-dry pool of her mercy –

"What is this?" Sweeney questions of her.

Blinking, she spins her eyes to him. He's gotten hold of one of the bottles and is sniffing it with utmost care as he pinches it between his thumb and forefinger, much like one might handle a dead rat.

"What is this?" she parrots him, sounding ridiculous even in her own ears: they hadn't rehearsed this and she's nervous. Why is he continuing the charade with unpracticed words? What if he does something spectacularly wrong? The man's unstable, that much is plain. He can't be trusted to regulate his emotions, to manipulate his words, to masquerade himself as she does. What if he makes a mistake? What if Pirelli beats him in whatever battle of wills and skills is to come? What if Beadle Bamford scoffs at him and decides to tell Turpin what a horrible barber dwells on Fleet Street? What if –

"Smells like piss," he says, raising his eyebrows and flaring his nostrils as he offers the bottle out for her inspection.

Her heart leaps around within her, bouncing from rib to rib, making her insides rattle and clack loud enough to wake the dead – or at least alarm the alive.

But Nellie Lovett is nothing if not a born actress.

Ignoring the bounds of her heart, trying to carefully jostle it back into place against the left side of her chest, she leans towards the proffered bottle.

"Smells like – " she takes an exaggerated whiff " – _pfffew_!" She twists her neck towards the bearded man standing next to her, who watches her with baffled eyes. "Wouldn't touch it if I was you, dear!"

"This is piss," Sweeney declares, brandishing the bottle out before him, "piss with ink."

She watches with satisfaction as the crowd begins to grow clamorous, angry. The boy talks faster, rivaling even the speed of her mouth on a good day, frantic to deny their accusations. Poor thing. She will make his life better. She doesn't know how just yet, but she trusts her sound intuition and capable mind to weave together some sort of plan soon enough; neither has ever failed her before.

"Let Pirelli's activate your roots, sir," the lad shouts out, his fingers shaking so badly she has no doubt he'd be tearing out his hair right now if he wasn't clutching those bottles.

"Keep it off your boots, sir," Sweeney returns without hesitation, "eats right through."

"Yes," cries the boy, "get Pirelli's, use a bottle of it – ladies seem to love it – "

"Flies do too," says Nellie, elbowing Sweeney in the ribs, and they both break into laughter. She bends over, hands clasped over her stomach, powerless against the chortles racking through her body.

They both manage to recover themselves as some baboon of a man dressed in an ostentatious purple suit bursts onto the stage, demanding to know who dares insult his work.

"I do," says Sweeney.

The tide of faces turns towards him. He keeps his gaze locked upon the baboon – he can't remember the man's name; as per usual, he was too much enjoying Nellie's voice to listen to all of her actual words this morning – as he proposes a shaving contest. Cornered, the purple baboon agrees. Sweeney peels off his leather overcoat, presses it into Nellie's arms, and mounts the platform.

The baboon – Pirelli, he knows now, as it's written all over the stage, though Sweeney still feels his own name for the fool is far more fitting – begins in haste the moment Beadle Bamford blows the whistle. Sweeney, however, only lifts his razor gently to his face. Once his promises and sweet nothings have been silently spoken to his silver friend, he takes up his strop and begins running his friend along its surface, straightening the blade to perfection.

He feels Nellie's eyes roasting against his skin as he leisurely goes about this task. He knows she is worried that he will fail in this shaving contest after having not shaved anyone in fifteen years, and to loiter about as he is doing is to commit suicide.

He is not worried. His mind may not remember how to swiftly and carefully shave a man, but his hand does. His mind may not have been able to recall the feel of his metal friend during all those years in Botany Bay, but his hand did. Like a lover, his skin still knows his friend's touch, her steps and her gestures and her caresses, the patterns they create as they move together, glide together, breathe together across the expanse of lather and flesh –

_Wheeeeeeeeeeeewwww!_

The whistle's trill and Beadle Bamford's subsequent holler shatter the intimate ecstasy of the moment:

"The winner is Todd!"

Blinking, Sweeney's eyes go first to his friend, who flashes him a smile; to the man in his chair, who pats his smooth cheeks with awe as he thanks Sweeney; to Pirelli, whose face is so crimson with throbbing blood it is possible his skin might rupture; to Nellie, whose smirk of alloyed astonishment and pleasure tosses his heart into his throat.

He did it. He never doubted that he would, or that he could – and he did.

And she is pleased.

Pirelli is saying something to him, congratulating him on a well-played contest, but what does Sweeney care? The man could be calling him names fouler than those thrown about in the colony and Sweeney would not be able to give a damn.

He holds out his hand and quietly demands for his earnings, his eyes never leaving Nellie. When he feels the money slide between his fingers, he dismounts the stage.

"Well done, dear, you pulled it off," says Nellie as she helps him back into his leather jacket. He feels like an invalid, having her dress him like this, but the heat of her fingers trailing along his skin sew his lips shut. Besides, his heart remains wedged up his throat, pounding against his Adam's apple, making talking as impossible as flying.

After getting both his arms through the sleeves, Nellie loops her arm through his (his heart throbs and his Adam's apple gyrates against it) and begins to walk him along the street, blathering about something he tries earnestly to pay attention to and can't.

Then Beadle Bamford is standing mere feet away from him and his feet are no longer treading against the ground and his heart has leapt from his throat to his mouth and is hammering against his threaded lips, demanding for release –

Yet when he opens his mouth, rather than his heart hurling itself to the ground, carefully oiled compliments come tumbling out. The beadle takes the praise in stride.

Within less than a minute, they've parted – with Beadle Bamford scheduled to come into his shop before the week is out.

_Before the week is out. _

The words chime in his head louder than Big Ben and lovelier than an angel chorus. Before the week is out, Beadle Bamford will be nothing more than a heap of clothes and sinews and rubies in his chair.

Before the week is out, he will be one step closer to making her happy.

Frowning, Nellie eyes the sedentary barber, his face slack of all emotion, gaze riveted to nothing. So rash, she thinks again. Not a bit of rationality to his actions, at least not when his emotions get in the way, and his emotions _do_ get in the way – far too often for her liking. If he keeps confronting the beadle directly like this, soon the beadle too will be just as suspicious of Sweeney as he is of her, and then he'll tell the judge, and then . . .

_Come what may,_ she tells herself firmly. _Vengeance will happen, one way or another. Sweeney has time to learn, and you have time to teach. After fifteen years of waiting, a few more weeks isn't going to kill you._

Determinedly, she turns her attention to Sweeney, who remains motionless, estranged from reality.

"C'mon, love," she sighs. Patting him on the chest, unable to feel her former prickle of delight when he quivers beneath the control of her touch, she steers him back towards Fleet Street.

xxx

"Why doesn't the beadle come?"

"Hush, darling," Nellie soothes him, torn between admiration and amusement at his lust for her, revealing neither in her tone. "Don't fret. He'll come soon enough."

A grunt is her only reply.

She sprawls in his barber chair, fiddling with the frayed hems of her sleeves. He paces the length of the room, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, and she finds her jaw clenching: her own feet beating against the ground provide comfort, a soothing rhythm to the unsynced chords of her rocketing thoughts, but the repetitious footfalls of others chafe against her eardrums.

"Before the week is out – that's what he said," spits out Sweeney.

Nellie's fairly certain that's the longest sentence he's said all week. He must be in quite a state of agitation.

"Who said the week's out yet, hmm?" she asks, lolling her head against the back of the chair to watch him pace. "'S'only Tuesday."

He snarls like a wildebeest and hurls his razor into the corner of the room with a slash of his arm.

His muscles paralyze the instant the deed is done, feet parted mid-stride, arm angled in a triangle towards the far wall. He did not mean to do that. He did not mean to lose control. No – he already lost control – he has no control over when the beadle comes, or when the judge dies, or when she is happy – but he's been clinging to the remains, dressing himself in the tatters and pretending he's regally clothed rather than nearly naked . . .

Her eyes are wide and locked on his. Caught off-guard by his moment of violence, her incognito of indifference is thrown aside.

She finds it again within the next heartbeat, eyelids lowering to half-mast, face relaxing into its usual knowing nonchalance. "Easy now, love. What's your rush to get to that man anyway, hmm? He'll come sure enough, and does it really matter if it's in one day or five dozen?" Seeing him wince at the very thought, she plows on: "The lead up to the thing is half the fun, love. The planning, the plotting, the building anticipation for a greater satisifaction once it's all over and done with . . . y'see, Mr. Todd, all good things come to those who can wait – "

The incongruous notes of the shop door _whack_ing open against the wall and the shop bell _ding-ding_ing beside it fill the air, cutting off Nellie's chatter. A young man barrels into the room, babbling in a language that might as well be Japanese for all that Sweeney can understand it in his consternation.

It takes Sweeney ten seconds to recognize the male as Anthony. It takes him another ten seconds – by which time Anthony has finished his gibberish and is staring at him with a slavishly hopeful expression – to process the word _Johanna_ and realize that Anthony has something in mind regarding stealing her away from the judge and bringing her to his shop. Here. Home.

Shame floods over him. How could he have forgotten his beautiful daughter? How could he not have thought of her once since returning to London? She had plagued him just as Nellie had all throughout his days as a convict, the one illness he had not minded bearing – but since setting eyes upon the pie maker, he'd neglected to think on her at all.

No matter. He thinks of her now. Thinks of her – and will be with her soon.

Truth be known, he loves Johanna more than he ever loved Lucy. Even though he shared her with Lucy, and even though it is naturally a different love, from the moment the midwife handed him the little pink body, he loved Johanna more than he would and could ever love Lucy.

Truth be known, he always wished he shared her with Nellie instead.

_And now you can . . ._

And they will be a real family, the barber and the baker and the little lamb, just the three of them . . .

His heart throbs in his head, so fast it makes him dizzy and swirls colors around his retinas. Could it really be this easy? Could it truly be that, in a mere week, everything he's yearned after for fifteen years will happen?

Anthony and Nellie stare at Sweeney, the former looking earnestly perplexed, the latter with a frown.

For God's sake, Nellie wonders, what's taking the man so bloody long to answer? This is what he wants, isn't it? Must she do _everything_ for him? The only thing currently separating her from a governess of a spoiledly incompetant child is the fact that she's not getting paid.

_Your pay will come, Lovett. Follow your own advice and _wait_._

"Bring the girl here, love," she tells Anthony, mustering all of her willpower not to roll her eyes at Sweeney.

Anthony's face lights up. "Thank you, mum." He turns to Sweeney, whose expression is still slack. "Mr. Todd? Do I have your consent as well?"

Sweeney blinks and rolls his lower jaw into place. "The girl may come," he grouses.

Anthony's grin threatens to break his face. In a flurry of harried 'thank you's and wringing of hands, he races out the door.

"Well, how's that, then, eh?" says Nellie, mustering a grin. "You'll have her back before the week's out."

Sweeney turns his blearied, uncomprehending gaze to her. The sight of her acts as an anecdote: he swims back to himself, focusing on reality – and as the words of her voice sort themselves out, it seems for a moment he might smile.

Then his gaze flashes dark. He turns away, towards the window, with a grunt.

This time, Nellie doesn't have enough willpower left to prevent herself from rolling her eyes.

She stands up and strolls towards him, sliding a soothing hand over his tricep. "Poor little Johanna," she muses aloud, partly so he can hear, partly to reassure herself. "All those years without a scrap of motherly affection. Well . . . I'll soon see to that."

Because that girl should have been left in her care – and it's high time she was allowed to at least save the daughter, as she could not the mother . . .

She throws Sweeney a glance from beneath her eyelashes. If he heard her words, he certainly isn't acknowling them in any way. With a sigh, she pats him twice on the arm, then departs. She stops by periodically in his shop throughout the day, trying to coax him out of his agitation, but he remains in the same disposition no matter the hour.

So when they settle down that evening in the parlor for a drink, the first thing out of his mouth is, unsurprisingly: "Why doesn't the beadle come? Before the week is out – that's what he said."

"Didn't we just have this conversation this morning, love?" Nellie inquires with a tiny smile.

The barber and baker sharing a bottle of gin after hours is not new. It's occurred every night since his return to London, in fact. He relishes this rote because he relishes any moment with her; she relishes this rote because she relishes any opportunity to further drag him under her control.

She approaches him, a tumbler in each hand, and nudges his shoulder. He turns from the wall to face her, brow furrowed and mouth downcasted, and takes the glass.

Settling into the couch and taking a swallow of her alcohol, she peers up at him. "I thought we agreed that you needed to wait it out, dear. Those who can wait are the only ones who get the good things to come, don't you remember?"

With a jerk of his head, Sweeney begins to pace the length of the parlor.

"Careful there, love," she chides, "you'll spill your gin all over my carpet."

He stops pacing, but the scowl remains imprinted on his face and the tension remains stiffened in his body. Nellie sighs as she realizes her own gin will have to wait. Rising to her feet, she crosses to him, sliding her hands onto his shoulders and massaging his muscles.

"Jesus, love, what're you hiding under your shirt?" she teases, clawing her fingers into his flesh in a feeble attempt to make him yield under her touch. "A dozen rocks? Steel? Might as well be, for all the tension you carry 'round with you all the time. You need to relax, Mr. Todd."

As if he can relax with her hands on his body. Sweeney swallows hard, relieved that she is behind him and thus cannot see the rapid pulsation in his throat as her fingers caper across his skin, or the way his eyes close against his will.

Her easy familiarity with him astounds him. Yes, they were friends once, and yes, simple touches on the arm or hand were natural between them then. But that was fifteen years ago, and they were different people . . . and neither of them would have dared link arms or caress shoulders in those days. And yet here she is – always – grasping his arm or kneading his shoulders or fingering his jacket buttons as naturally as she breathes.

Why can he not breathe just as easily as she?

"Really, love, you need to calm down," she tells him with mock sterness. "I'm not going to eat you alive, y'know."

Placing his glass of gin on a little table housing a candle, she guides him to the settee. She sits him down and positions herself behind before resuming his massage. Her fingers play, firm but tender, across his skin, delving into every hardened sinew, working each one soft and supple.

Even though her hands dancing along his physique are anything but calming, he finds himself relaxing, body slackening, headache abaiting; Beadle Bamford becomes a niggling thought in the back of his mind rather than a pounding absent presence.

"He'll come eventually," she hums. "You've just got to hold on and wait it out. What's your rush? It's been fifteen years already – a week or two more won't hurt you. All good things come to those who can wait, y'know."

He focuses more intently on her words than he has all week, absorbing her meaning rather than just her cadence. She's right, of course. She's always right.

She finishes his massage and relaxes back into the sofa. He picks up his tumbler and takes a long sip, relishing the burn in his throat as he does the burn in the sinews of his shoulders and back.

"And you're still not relaxed," she laughs, downing half of her gin in a single swallow. "Honestly, Mr. T, this ain't the army. You don't have to sit so straight and proper."

He looks at her: she's sunk deeply into the sofa, sprawled across every inch of available space save for the tiny corner he occupies at the other end. Her back reclines against the armrest; one leg dangles off the side of the couch as the other extends across the cushions, toes nearly brushing his thigh.

With effort, he leans back into the settee, loosening his joints and trying to imitate her slack limbs, dropping an elbow onto the opposite armrest.

"Well, it's a start," Nellie chuckles with a grin. Gulping the remaining half of her gin, she rises to get herself a refill.

"Anyway," she says, pouring herself a generous measure of alcohol before returning to the settee to loll as before, "I've been thinking, love, and your barber shop is quite drab. If we're wanting customers to start showing up – don't look at me like that, I know you've already had a few, I mean if we want _lots_ of 'em – we've got to make more of an effort to tidy up the place. Sweeping and dusting the lot weren't enough. What would you say to getting a few little trinkets to sprinkle 'round the room? We could head out to the market tomorrow for a bit of haggling. Or maybe some flowers. They'd really brighten up the room. Daisies, perhaps."

"Your favorite flowers are daisies," he says suddenly, interupts suddenly, remembers suddenly.

Nellie's chattering lips numb.

"So are Lucy's," she whispers.

When she realizes that Sweeney is staring at her in a manner far too aware for a man so blind, she forces herself to smile.

"All the more reason to buy 'em, then, eh?" she asks brightly. "For her memory? Besides, they're so pretty, and – well, I don't mean to offend you, love, but your barber shop looks pretty terrible at the moment. Some daisies wouldn't mask all the gloom up there, but they could do a passable job of distracting customers, at least – "

She breaks off when he continues to watch her in a foreignly alert way. Discomfited by the fact that her voice – which she has learned quickly is an incredibly efficient weapon in lulling him to calm docility – makes no effect upon him tonight, she bolts the entire contents of her tumbler in two successive swallows as an excuse to stand up and get another refill.

"Mrs. Lovett?"

Her fingers tighten around the neck of the bottle. The strength in his contemplation of her is bad enough – and now he's talking, _asking_ even, of his own volition.

_See? This is what you get when you let your mask slide for even a second. For God's sake, Lovett, you know better._

"Yes, love?" she replies casually.

He does not answer until – sensing his desire and reluctantly knowing she must obey it – she turns to face him. His eyes are steady and sharp on hers, observing, knowing, black burning furnaces of pain and love.

"Why do you care?" Sweeney questions.

Nellie coughs out a laugh, her tumbler tinkling against the bottle as she dumps gin inside the glass. "Why do I care if your shop looks nice? So you can get business, silly man. What, you think I'm going to let you mooch off me forever? Now, that's just not fair, Mr. Todd. I've got myself to look after, and that's money that I've earned through hard sweat and labor. Besides" – she hacks up another giggle – "don't you think it'd hurt your pride a wee bit to be supported entirely by a woman? Now, of course I'm not a man, but I think I'd find it quite – mmm, what's the word – demoralizing, I s'pose? – were I a man what needed to be backed financially by a woman – "

"That's not what I meant," says Sweeney.

She flounces back to the settee and sprawls across its length as she did before, but now her languidity seems forced, the loafing angles of the spine and limbs too determinedly curled, too perfectedly relaxed. Her head lolls against the armrest, face turned to the cold, unoccupied fireplace.

"Well," she says, "you'll have to be more explicit 'bout what you _do_ mean, love. It's been a long day and I'm not up for scouring around for hidden meanings or some such – "

"Why do you care about avenging Lucy?" asks Sweeney.

Cold traces across her cheeks and down her neck, like frozen fingers caressing her face and leaving icy rivulets in their wake; simultaneously her stomach burns so hot it feels as if she's swallowed the sun and it's attempting to burst free from her body and rejoin the sky where it belongs. The tumbler is slippery between her hands and her spine is follisized in its unnaturally langorious pose and her corset is too tight and her _dammit Lovett don't do this don't fall apart don't let him see you think act mask –_

"Nellie?" mumurs Sweeney.

"'Cause – 'cause it were wrong," says Nellie, without knowing where the words come from, without knowing that she's spoken them. Her eyes move to his. "It were wrong, what happened to her, and Turpin should pay."

"Yes, but – "

Sweeney struggles for words and comes up empty. He looks to her, imploring, but she will not help him speak this time. He raps his fingers against his tumbler, tugs at the sleeves of his shirt, resists jumping to his feet to pace only by tightening the muscles of his legs.

"Yes, it was wrong," he says at last, "but wrong things happen every day . . . people are destroyed every day . . . why do you care so much more about Lucy's plight than anyone else's?"

"Hers is what awakened me to it," she whispers. "To all the wrongs and hurts, I mean."

Her gaze clouds over as she succumbs under the weight of buried memories and aches blossoming over her as fresh as spring. Drowning in the recollections, she forgets that she speaks aloud, and she forgets that he listens.

"I'd never thought the world was perfect – but I did think it was beautiful. A place of happiness and light and even an occasional miracle. I knew pain existed – I'd seen it, and I'd felt it – but the spasms of pain could never rain out the beauty . . . because God took joy in our joy, not our pain, so there'd always be more joy than pain . . ."

She turns her face to the unlit fireplace, pupils wavering to trail the nonexistant dance of the flames.

"But for Lucy to be broken," she mumurs, "for someone so pure to be tattered beyond repair . . . it wasn't right. Right doesn't begin to cover it, but no one's yet invented a better word. It wasn't right and it wasn't fair. That's why I care more about her plight than anyone else's: most others were already half-falling, or bearing a few cracks, and Lucy . . . Lucy wasn't neither. Lucy was standing and stable and whole."

Her hands shake. She tightens them around her tumbler to stop the tremor; neither she nor Sweeney think to worry that it might shatter from her tight embrace.

"That something so pure could be soiled without even much a backwards glance from the bastard what did it – it got to me. It made me see what I'd never been able to before: that God is a fabrication – and if he's not, then he and Satan are the same man . . . that there's a hole in the world like a great black pit . . . a hole filled with people what're filled with shit . . ."

Blinking, surfacing back to reality, she loosens her grip on her glass and twists her neck around to peer at Sweeney. He watches her quietly from the opposite end of the settee.

"Well," says Nellie, heaving a grin onto her face, "there you have it. Now you know why I care so much 'bout Lucy's plight and getting Turpin's head on the cutting block."

Her stomach churns. She cannot believe she just told him all that. She knows telling him the truth (in this particular case, at least) won't bring any harm; if anything, it shall make him trust her more and thus further her purpose. Yet a part of her wishes she had not shared a word of it. It is for no grand scheme or necessary façade that she wishes this: Nellie Lovett has merely become uncomfortable offering anything real to another human being.

"Though really, love," she rambles on, "it should've just been enough that I want to help you, rather than you pushing me to tell all my big secrets like a little gossiping schoolgirl. I mean, really – would you rather that I'd just have been sitting idly all these past fifteen years and not trying to kill Turpin? You'd rather I didn't give you a place to stay and food to eat while you wait to get his throat bare?"

"No," says Sweeney without faltering, but they both know it won't be for Lucy that he lures Turpin to his barber chair. "No, of course not. Thank you."

Nellie's grin widens. "Seven words all at once – and add that to all the other sentences you strung together earlier this evening – this's quite an achievement, love. I'm impressed."

He looks at her but does not reply; he would read all of Johnson's dictionary aloud if he thought for a second it would bring a genuine smile to her lips.

"Well, I'd best not push my luck by asking for more words out of you," says Nellie. "I think I'll turn in for the evening." Stretching her arms wide, she rises to her feet and takes his empty gin glass, stacking it within hers to carry into the kitchen.

"'Night, love, sleep well," she says with an affectionate good-bye squeeze on the shoulder, even though neither of them ever sleeps well and even though the lilt of her voice as she pronounces _love_ is just as meaningful as the toothsome syllables a whore whispers to her customers.

Nonetheless, he closes his eyes. Nonetheless, he whispers back even though she's already left the room – his voice not falsely sugared as hers was, but genuine and true, pure in its roughness:

"Good-night, Nellie," he whispers. "Sleep well."


	4. How We've Lived

"So, um . . . how'd you end up with that dreadful Eyetalian?"

"Got me from the workhouse, he did," says Toby Ragg. "Been there since I was born . . ."

He chatters on as he ambles around the parlor, glancing into the photos lining the mantle, prodding bits of furniture, taking swigs of his gin.

Nellie wants to listen to what the boy says. She wants to learn of the trials he's been through and deduce how can she relieve his pains. But she can't. She's too distracted. Too alert to what is not happening within this room.

Her eyes shift to the ceiling yet again before she forces them back to Toby, hoping he didn't noticed her lapse of attention. How much longer will she need to keep the boy down here? How much longer could Sweeney possibly need to talk to Pirelli? She's already fed the lad two pies, given him a house tour, and presented him with a whole bottle of gin. She can't offer much more. Sweeney Todd possess absolutely no sense of time.

She wants desperate to traverse upstairs, but she knows it will be best if she does not interrupt. If there is one thing she has learned in her forty-one years, it is that men need to operate under the delusion that they control the world and women merely accessorize their arms. Sweeney, as deep as his devotion to her runs, is no different. To intervene, then, during what should be entirely a masculine transaction, would be dangerous.

But for God's sake, how long do they need?

She rakes her gaze over the ceiling yet again, straining to hear the scrape of shoes, the drone of words, the hiss of razorblades, anything at all that would clue her in . . .

xxx

The blade pulses as a second heart within his palm.

It beats in a rhythm directly opposite his own heart, creating a continuous _thud-thud-thud-thud-thud-thud-thud-thud _in his ears.

Bliss is so close he can taste it, so close his hand is shaking with all the power of God Himself – but then, he doesn't believe in God, not any longer – so perhaps God has transferred all His former powers to him – perhaps God too sees the need for retribution, even if He would never publically announce that He condones murder –

Sweeney surges forward, razor snicking open, arm raised, eyes rooted to Turpin's neck –

_Wait._

Her word clutches him like the nip of a lover, tender but firm, and he halts in his tracks.

_Wait. _

But of course. Had she told not him it is better to enjoy the moment? Had she not told him good things come to those with patience? Each time he is upset that the beadle and judge have not yet come, she – who had shouldered the pain of being unable to retrieve retribution for fifteen years – has been calm. She has cajoled him, soothed him that all would be well, that the Fates could not be cruel forever. That their hour would come.

And she was right. She is always right.

But even she could not have predicted that, mere hours later, the very man she had been aching to sink her teeth into for nearly two decades would be reposing within Sweeney Todd's barber chair.

He flashes a savage grin at Turpin's back. Yes. He must enjoy this moment. He must enjoy Turpin's death. For her. Clouds of euphoria fuzz over his mind again – _for her _– she will be so pleased when she finds out that the judge is dead – she will be so pleased to learn that he killed this bastard for her – it is fortunate that Pirelli came just before, that he was able to practice on that baboon before being offered his true prey, else he might be anxious as to the outcome . . . as to what could go wrong . . .

For now, safe with the knowledge that this murder is possible and that the Fates are truly on his side, he knows that nothing can.

Composedly, he mixes up a cup of lather before beginning to paint the judge's face with white froth, eyes already glossy as he envisions how stunning it will be when red permeates the white. How should he do it? A single cut along half the circumference of the neck? A vicious tear at the jugular? A succession of short jabs all across the stubbled surface? A piercing into the –

"_Mr. Todd!"_

Anthony Hope barrels into the room and eradicates all his fantasies.

The judge is on his feet and snarling into both of their faces, the boy is blinking and stumbling through a mileage of half-formed replies, and the barber cannot move, cannot speak, cannot comprehend what is happening. Everything plays out before him slowly, the words echoing in a series of meaningless sounds. The razor hangs limp in his hand, lifeless, and not his blade nor his own heart pulses against his skin any longer.

He comes back to life as the door slams shut, rattling on its feeble hinges.

Turpin is gone. Retribution is gone. His balm for her is gone.

"M-Mr. Todd?" stutters Anthony.

"Out," whispers Sweeney, the world barely passing as a breath. His throat is tight, his mouth dry. His heart stagnant.

"Mr. Todd, I – "

"_OUT!" _

It's a scream this time, a shattering of the rage bottled up for too many years, a cry that rattles in his bones –

But it is not Sweeney's voice that shrieks the word.

"_OUT, I SAID OUT!"_ Nellie roars, and Anthony doesn't need to be told a third time: he bolts for the door, practically throwing himself down the stairs in his haste.

Nellie's feet batter into the room, charting her from one end of the shop to the other, then back, then again, again, again. Red burns against her pale complexion so deeply he almost anticipates her blood to break that last barrier of skin and gush upon the floor. Half of her hair has fallen from her up-do and waterfalls unmethodically around her neck; the rest of her curls leap from her skull like vipers poised for attack.

He stares at her, wide-eyed: He's not seen her exhibit so much genuine emotion in fifteen years.

"Nellie . . .?" he dares to whisper, but she doesn't notice.

"Nellie," he tries again, a bit louder.

She comes to a halt and spins towards him, her fury drafting towards him and nearly knocking him off his feet.

"You had him," she says. "You had him – his throat was bare beneath your hand – "

"Nellie," Sweeney tries to placate her; he is not normally the voice of reason, but one of them must be, and she is clearly unable to be so at this moment. "Nellie, calm down – "

She growls and digs her feet harder into the worn floorboards as she maps angry patterns across the room. She who loves to talk is speechless; she who dwells with words as easily and naturally as a tiger hunts its prey cannot catch even a mouse. Thoughts spiral without form or reason through her mind, half-shaped, indistinctly sharp:

_No justice – where did Pirelli – Turpin – Turpin just left – never get him – never save her – the fool – the bastard – Turpin – never never never –_

She cannot process it. She cannot believe it.

What is the point? What is her purpose? There is none. There is none if it's unobtainable. If justice does not exist – which she has always known and yet never accepted – why should she continually pursue it?

Nellie Lovett has never accepted defeat. Nellie Lovett has never allowed herself to shrug her shoulders and give up. She would not ever take the coward's route out, she told herself from a very young age. Each time she fell to the ground, rather than sprawling about and moaning of her aches, she gained strength and picked herself back up.

But even gaining strength from falls doesn't mean that they don't hurt. It doesn't mean that bruises don't blossom, or that skin doesn't bleed.

"No – you had him!" she manages to yell. "You had him right there and his throat was bare and just when exactly did you plan to come find me so I could get him?"

Sweeney's forehead wrinkles. "I was – supposed to come get you?"

She barks out a laugh that makes the walls tremble and makes him wince. She paces even more viciously than before. "What – you thought _you_'d get to kill him? You thought I'd let _you_ do what I've waited for longer than anyone else? His throat is _mine_, Todd – it's been mine since he raped Lucy and it'll be mine 'til the day he dies – "

"Lucy is my wife," says Sweeney, stupefied. "I must avenge her – it should be my hand that – "

"Oh, drop the act – you're not doing this for her anymore than you actually stole Turpin's pearls fifteen years ago, and we both know it."

His heart belly-flops to his feet – not because what she said is untrue, but because it _is_ true . . . and neither of them has ever acknowledged it aloud. They both need their facades to survive. For her to stomp upon them, even in a moment of such passion, is unthinkable.

"And you _had_ him!" she cries again, feet still beating without remorse upon the floor. "His throat was bare and he'll never come again – "

"Easy, now," says Sweeney, his legs striding towards her, his arms stretching out as though for an embrace – but his limbs wither against his chest before he can touch her. "Hush, love, hush – "

Their shoulders slam into one another on her next stride across the room. He reels backwards and resumes his former place near the wall, well out of her pacing range. She doesn't even notice.

"There's a hole in the world like a great black pit and it's filled with people what're filled with shit," she mutters under her breath, faster than a nun chanting over her rosary, "and the vermin of the world inhabit it – "

As suddenly as she whips back and forth across the floor, she comes to a halt, directly beneath the large slanting window. Her eyes feast upon the panes. She moves one step closer, then two, pressing her face and palms against the glass, fogging it with her breath and her fingerprints.

A cold smile stretches across her mouth.

"But not for long . . ." she whispers, lips crawling against the glass panes, leaving a smudged path as they wipe away the condensation of her breath.

"They all deserve to die," says Nellie, as matter-of-factly as the participants of the Crusades, purpose driving her to speak with brutal calm. She turns to the side and directs her smile at him, her eyes stretching far beyond. Sweeney finds himself shivering and clutches his arms against his sides to keep still. "Tell you why, Mr. Todd, tell you why . . ."

So she reveals to him her epiphany, basking in it. Why did it take her so long to understand the world and realize how futile her every action is, yet how significant too? – the limits of her potential, and the far reaches of it? – how her role in restoring justice to this earth may seem small, but it is as crucial as breathing? – for if not her, who?

The thoughts are scrambled, but they are clear.

There is no justice. Those who do hold its power should not, and those who do not hold it should.

Not any longer. She holds just as much power as the gluttonous vultures of the law. They've never realized it before, and neither has she – but she does now, and they will soon.

And all will be as it should.

Her tirade comes to an end. Nellie kneels against the ground, silent and still, face turned to the floor, eyes hidden beneath downcast lashes. Reverence burns within her soul and through her fingertips as she pushes them to the ground.

He looks at her, sick with fascination: He never thought a woman so strong could be burned by anything; he never thought the Devil's wife could hold reverence for anything.

"Yes," Sweeney agrees. He doesn't fully understand what she's raving about – she can't truly think to butcher the entire London populace and not draw attention to herself? – but he will aid her pursuit however he can. Anything for her.

There are, however, more pressing matters than the massacre of London at present. And, though this may not be the best time to discuss those matters, he sees no other option.

"But, Mrs. Lovett," says Sweeney with as much delicacy as he can muster, jerking his head towards the trunk in the corner, "what'll we do with him?"

She doesn't so much as flinch.

"Mrs. Lovett. Mrs. Lovett?" He strides over and falls to his knees in front of her, tapping her shoulder. "Nellie."

Her chin lifts. She turns dead eyes upon him and only with effort does he hide a shudder.

"What," she says, her voice as empty as her gaze.

"What are we to do with him?" Sweeney asks again.

Nellie stares at him. She's never felt so alive in all her forty-one years – and he dares trivialize the moment by urging her with words of nonsense? Can't he understand that, for once, for fucking once in her life, she doesn't need words to fill the silent rooms and devoid space? That she's reached her own heaven – but she does not believe in Him who dwells in heaven – and too, another but: she is still alive, so alive, dear God she hopes she always remains this alive, so alive in her death – and that in her heaven, she doesn't need to keep up a continual stream of chatter to keep her going?

Something warm snakes around her waist and hauls her upward. If she could register shock, she would feel it now: Sweeney has not been bold enough to initiate physical contact between them since his return to London, yet he has just twined his arm around her waist.

He begins to walk forward, urging her feet to move with his. She drags her legs across the floor, but the muscles in her body hang limp, unresponsive. So, rather than walking together, they end up performing an odd shuffle down the stairs and into her shop, he leading them both, she flopping against his side.

Inside Mrs. Lovett's Emporium, he perches her on a chair. He does his best to prop her carefully and not slam her legs against the table, or drop her too heavily, though he doubts she would notice even if he did.

The silence roars in his ears. Desperate for her voice, he fetches a bottle of gin and two tumblers, pouring them both a generous measure. The glass of the bottle and the tumblers clank together as his hands tremble.

"Drink," he urges her as he sets one glass down.

He takes the seat beside her. He watches her shoulder hike towards her ear, her bicep rise towards the table, her elbow bend and swing her forearm outward, her every muscle flex as she stretches for what she is only half a foot away from, her fingers close upon the glass, her arm fold back together like an accordion and her shoulder blade press into her back and her wrist curve towards her mouth and her throat buckle in a swallow. Each move precise and automatic, a long-perfected machine that wastes not a single movement.

He downs his own shot, then gives them both refills. Hoping that the alcohol has revived her to discuss at least one practical manner before moving onto the matter of her genocide, he says, "Mrs. Lovett, what should we do about Pirelli?"

She flicks her eyes at him without concern, as one might towards a bug on the window.

"Didn't you already do – whatever was needed with him?" she mutters.

"Well," says Sweeney, frowning, "I did kill him, yes, but – "

The _smack_ of her head hitting the table cuts him off. "You _idiot_," she groans into the tabletop, then snaps her head back into place, berating herself. She knows better than to insult Sweeney's intelligence to his face.

Sweeney rears indignantly. "He tried to blackmail me."

_Typical man,_ she thinks, watching his defensive stance.

"Half my earnings," he elaborates, when the scorn does not leave her face.

"Oh," she says, blinking, deflating. Maybe she underestimates his intelligence. "Well. That's a different matter, then."

Sweeney, calm again under her approval, nods.

Nellie Lovett, master of brilliant plots and trickery, squints into the bowels of her tumbler and suggests, "Well, later on, when it's dark, we'll take him to some secret place – and bury him."

"Ah," says Sweeney. "Yes. We could."

But he frowns to himself. A plan so simple has too many potential routes leading to failure. A body is too bulky to carry manually for any great distance without being noticed, but taking a carriage would draw no less attention; decomposing human flesh is the worst smell in existence and is thus bound to turn noses; Pirelli will drip blood on the ground, a trail not of breadcrumbs but of liquid rubies, for anyone to follow home; officers will surely suspect; and just where the hell are they to find 'some secret place' within the largest city of the world?

Needing to clear his head, he gets to his feet, but finds himself without any primal desire to pace across the floor as per usual. Instead, he ambles to one of the windows, lifting aside a bit of curtain and peering outside, sliding the fabric between his fingers, siphoning in the world outside.

It's strange how removed he feels from these people, even here and now without the ocean parting them as it did only several weeks ago, separated by memories rather than miles. It's strange how he feels so alone in a country of over sixteen million humans. All these bodies, all these souls . . . surely among them there is one whom he could connect with – Nellie aside, of course; Nellie he does not even consider among these worthless hoards. All these people squandering their lives away worrying over social parties or small bits of money or blisters that will heal, all these petty concerns consuming them until there's nothing left, all these wasted lives, all this wasted flesh, all this wasted time and potential and living . . .

_Waste not, want not,_ Nellie trills in his mind as she scraps gristle from the bones of a scrawny slab of beef, a rare treat, picked up at the butcher's.

His heart freezes. His hand fists in the curtain.

His mouth grins.

He turns his gaze upon Nellie, fingers still clutching the curtain with Herculean strength, possessed by muscle and determination and purpose never before experienced. If she wants a massacre, he'll give her one – but the bodies must go somewhere, and she must not starve while he slaughters.

This is brilliant. This is perfect. She will love this.

She will love him.

He clears his throat. She doesn't look at him. He closes his eyes and curses his inability with words, before prying his eyelids and his lips apart.

"I – you – it seems a downright shame," he says.

"Shame," she echoes, not even blessing him with a glance.

"It – seems – an awful waste," he persists, staring at her, willing her to understand.

Nellie swirls the last bit of gin in her glass around, lifts the tumbler to her lips, and swallows.

"Such a nice plump frame he has – had – has," he stammers out, "and where it can't be traced . . ."

She grabs the gin flagon and bangs it unhappily against the table when she sees that it's empty.

Sweeney grits his teeth, furious with himself. He endured fifteen years of living hell in the colony, escaped and nearly lost his life to an ocean as merciless as God – and now he can't even muster up the courage to spit out a coherent sentence? Talking should be small potatoes compared to all that.

He sets his shoulders. He _will _speak – and she _will _listen.

"Your business needs a lift," says Sweeney, eyes stabbing like steel into her skull. "You have debts to erase. Think of it as thrift, or a gift. . . . I mean, with the price of meat what it is – when you get it – if you get it – "

Her gaze swings up towards him, sparking with that same fervor that it did just minutes before in his shop. This time, the expression doesn't terrify him; this time, the expression is mirrored within his own face.

"Ah," she whispers.

She sets both the flagon and the tumbler upon the table. "Mr. Todd," she says, standing, "you're a bloody wonder – y'know that?"

He glows beneath the praise. _Also typical man,_ she muses with exasperation. Pretending to be in control with utmost confidence in his every twitch – but he can't possibly be in control or confident without a woman continually restoring his faith in his manhood.

And yet – and yet . . . exasperation is not her predominant emotion currently, as it normally is with Sweeney Todd. Surging far higher are feelings she never expected to hold for him: pleasant incredulity, admiration, partiality. Awe.

She begins to walk towards him – but he is already striding towards her. He meets her beside the table and seizes her around the waist. Her incredulity and awe increases tenfold: save for dragging her down the stairs minutes before – a moment which hardly counts, seeing as how hopelessly inanimate she was then – he has never before reached for her without she reaching for him first.

He pulls her into a dance, moving as naturally as he breathes. He continues to talk as they waltz, tossing out further ideas for her new meat pie business, bantering with her as he did that afternoon in the marketplace. Her mouth grins and her throat bubbles with laughter. He guides her feet across the floor, molds her steps to match his, and she lets him: for once, it's nice not to be in command, worrying perpetually about steering everything in the proper direction.

"Since marine doesn't appeal to you, how about rear admiral?" he suggests, quirking one eyebrow.

"Too salty," she says, wrinkling her nose. "I prefer general."

"With or without his privates?" he returns. "With is extra."

Nellie breaks out in a fit of giggles. She tries to rein in control, tries to hold her lips shut and strain her muscles against the laughs, but their force is just too great. So she succumbs.

Drunk with laughter – and he knows it's the laughter and not the alcohol she's drunk on, because she's built up too much tolerance to alcohol but has developed none for unadulterated laughter – she collapses into his arms.

And everything else goes away.

* * *

><p><strong>AN:** Reviews are love.


	5. Blind With What I Can't Forget

"I didn't know you could play piano, mum."

"I can't," Nellie replies with a laugh as she sits down upon the harmonium bench, tracing her fingers along the grooves between the keys. "This isn't a piano though, love, it's a harmonium. Can't play this here either – but I couldn't resist buying it. Business's been doing so well lately that I just had to treat myself."

Who knew a single human would yield enough meat for four dozen pies – and counting? Moreover, who knew human meat would be such a commercial success? She hadn't thought she could feel any further surprise at the ignorance and stupidity of Londoners, but – yet again – she had been wrong. Pirelli's pies had been selling faster than hot cakes.

"And this harmonium was such a bargain too," she continues. "It was only partly singed when the chapel burnt down."

Toby shifts from foot to foot in the doorway. "I always wanted to learn how to play the piano," he admits.

"Well, don't just stand there," Nellie pretends to reprimand him. "Come learn how to play with me."

Grinning, he takes a seat next to her.

"But you've got to stop calling it a piano," she says, reaching up to ruffle his hair, smiling as he whines and bats away her hands. "It's a harmonium. Can't have you wandering around calling things what they're not."

Toby swats her fingers and looks at the harmonium keys. "How're you going to learn to play? You don't have any books or nothing."

Nellie snorts. "Books? You think I learned to make pies by reading books, dear? Or how to do laundry, or run my own business?" _Or extract revenge? _"I'm not saying books ain't useful, love. They are when the occasion calls for 'em. But some things can only be learned through sitting down and getting your hands in it."

She lays her fingers along the keys, one fingertip against each, the way she's seen it done. She presses her left index finger down and the room trembles with a single chord. Her right fourth finger descends upon its key, her widow's ring rubbing between flesh and ivory, and a second note pulses through the room, discordant to the first.

"You learning a lot with that experience?" Toby teases.

"Lots," Nellie confirms with mock certainty, proceeding to stamp her fingers along all the keys in no particular order. The room jangles with her unmelodious song and it grates against her ears. But she keeps playing.

"C'mon, love, join in," she urges Toby.

He gives her a dubious look, but places his hands against the far right end of the keyboard and pushes a single key.

"That's hardly the spirit, love," she chides him. Continuing to slam the fingers of her left hand along the keys, she loops her other arm around his shoulders, crushing him against her side and ruffling his hair again.

"Mrs. Lovett!" Toby yelps, squirming, flailing against her without any real will to tear himself away. "I told you to stop that!"

Nellie sets her jaw and issues her ultimatum: "I'm not going to stop until you play the harmonium with me."

"You're not even playing it properly – when you said you was going to learn it, I thought you was actually going to learn correctly, not just slam the keys – "

"Who says this's incorrect? It's making music, ain't it? What's incorrect about that?" Her fingers rumple his hair further, making it stand on end with static and adding at least two inches to his height. "Now, are you going to make some music with me or not?"

"Alright, alright!"

Nellie abandons her mission to add a third inch to Toby's height with his hair, moving her hand from his scalp to the keyboard. Her arm remains curved around his shoulders.

Toby begins to slap his hands against the keyboard, beating with wild freedom at the keys. He tosses her a glance beneath raised eyebrows. "Happy now? This more like it?"

Her lips twitch. "Much better."

She doesn't know how long they continue on like that with their fingers smacking the keys – but when her eyes drift to the clock on the mantelpiece, she lets out a gasp.

"Quarter to midnight! Sweet Jesus, I'd no idea it was so late. You ought to be asleep, love."

"I'm not tired," he protests. "And I'm old enough to decide when I go to bed."

"Don't whine, Toby – it's unbecoming." She makes to rumple his hair again but he dodges out of her grasp, leaping up from the harmonium bench and folding his arms over his chest. Without his body pressed against hers, she becomes aware how cold the room is. The summer heat of August is fading fast into fall.

"Go on, love," she urges, gently, "off to bed with you. You'll thank me tomorrow when you're up at the crack of dawn."

"Alright," he agrees, petulantly digging his toes into the carpet. "But I'm getting a glass of gin before I go to sleep."

"Fine," she says, rolling her eyes, "so long as it's only the one glass and not the whole bloody bottle again."

"Fine," says Toby, his peevish tone an exact mirror of hers, arms still folded across his chest – but before he exits the room, he crosses back over to the harmonium bench and kisses her forehead.

Her heart swells. Loving this boy was never part of her plan in saving him, and Nellie detests having her plans derailed for any reason. But maybe sometimes, through the derailing, a better track can be discovered.

"Good evening, Mrs. Lovett."

She cries out and whirls around on the bench. Sweeney stands against the far wall, watching her.

"Good God, Mr. Todd," says Nellie, slumping forward. "Gave me a fright, y'did. Just how long've you been standing there?"

His shoulders lift then fall in a shrug.

"Well, next time," she admonishes as she rises to her feet, scowling, "try announcing your presence, eh? It's called being polite, Mr. T, to let others know when you come into a room, so's you don't nearly send them into heart failure later on when you finally _do _decide to grace them all with the knowledge that you've come in – "

"I did it," Sweeney says to her – _interrupts_ her, moreover.

She raises her eyebrow. She still hasn't adjusted to him being comfortable talking around her, yet ever since he came up with the genius plan to put humans into pies, he's found some inner well of strength with which to do so. Mind, it's not as though he's now spouting elegant speeches or even complete sentences. Still, it's quite a leap, considering where he started.

"Don't play coy, love," she says. "Just what exactly did you do?"

She thinks she knows already what he did – knows from the way his hands are buried in his pockets, shoulders for once relaxed rather than hunched to his ears and hiding the elegant curves of his neck – but she wants to hear him say it.

In answer, he pulls his hands from his pockets and unfurls his fingers, sharing with her the crimson pathways on his palms that detail his victory.

She stares at his hands, imprinting the atlas of flesh and blood to her memory. This is really happening. He is truly willing to do anything for her.

Her dead heart swells for the second time that evening.

"Well," she says in a brusque tone, meeting his radiant eyes with her own skeptical, half-lifted brow, "'s'not like this's the first one you killed, dear. Pirelli came before. And, what with the way you was so calm about that blighter, I'm guessing he wasn't your first either."

The words scratch harsh in her throat. She can't have him knowing that she approves so heartily, after all. She must keep him on his toes.

Sweeney is not deterred by her nonchalance. His face glows with that stoic passion that has already become a brand across his face whenever he stands within Nellie's presence.

"Yes," he says, "but this is our first."

Her heart swells further, but not pleasantly – it swells strangely – foreignly – painfully – it feels too big within the confines of her chest. She clears her throat, meanders over to the settee, and flops upon it, back stretched along the cushions, one arm thrown over her forehead, willing her heart to return to its standard size.

"Ours? Don't be silly, love," she says, craning her neck over the armrest to peer at him. "You did it all on your own."

His eyes gleam and she smiles, heart normalizing, eyes closing. There is a fine line between keeping him on his toes and continuing to string him along.

A rustle of fabric against fabric draws open her eyes again: Sweeney's taken a seat in the armchair beside the settee, bottom scooted so far forward along the seat that it's a miracle he hasn't fallen off, leaning towards her with his hands on his knees, muscles taut with fervor.

A fledgling idea that she has never permitted to hatch begins to birth. The line between keeping him on his toes and stringing him along is a fine one, to be sure . . .

Nellie removes the arm from her forehead and looks directly at him. She counts five seconds in her head before murmuring, "But that doesn't mean I don't appreciate what you did – have done – will continue on doing . . . 'cause I do, love. Tremendously."

"Thank you," says Sweeney quietly.

She shifts herself into a sitting position, never allowing her eyes to abandon his. "Not many people would do what you're doing for me – if _any_ people would."

"With all due respect, Mrs. Lovett," says Sweeney, bowing his head but also holding her gaze, "my actions are committed for justice, not your sake."

"Naturally," says Nellie breezily. Oh, the man is a terrible liar . . . but at least he doesn't tremble from head to toe anymore just from sharing the same bloody air as her. "All I meant is that we're acting on a common purpose – that we both want the same thing and're working together to achieve it . . . deliver justice where the corrupt lawmakers and enforcers won't, I mean. Most people're too afraid to go against written law and serve what's really just to the world."

Sweeney nods and moves his eyes to his knees, uncomfortable with this conversation. She must be mocking him. She must know that this first murder was for her – that all his future murders are for her – and she is no longer willing to even pretend that he seeks justice rather than her favor, which must mean she is wearying of him . . .

Sensing his unease, Nellie raises herself to her feet and strolls over to him. "There, there, love," she says, sliding her hands onto his shoulders from behind his chair, "I'm not making fun of you. Can't you tell when a woman's being flippant and when she's being serious?"

He sinks into the chair and into her touch. "No," he admits.

She laughs, a low little purr in the back of her throat. "You're hopeless, Mr. Todd. Absolutely hopeless. Now, see there – couldn't you tell I was teasing that time?"

"But I _am_ hopeless," Sweeney says in a strained voice, because he's trying to mimic her playful tone and failing miserably – because it's also the truth. What sort of man falls for a woman who will never look at him with anything but cold calculation in her gaze? It's rare enough that she actually looks _at_ him and not beyond – or, worse, right through. As though he is of as little consequence as the oxygen she breathes: required, but never considered.

"Mr. Todd!" Nellie scolds. She stomps around to the front of his chair to glare down at him. "I'll not have you talking like that, y'hear? Any man what'd willing take the law into his own hands – what'd tries to restore justice to the world – love, that man is far from useless."

Her eyes pierce him like a sword straight into an artery, leaving him almost gasping in pain. He immediately lowers his eyes. All he ever wants is for her to look right at him – and yet, now that she actually is, he can't bear to meet her gaze.

"Look at me, Mr. Todd," Nellie demands.

He does not.

Fingers, callused and warm, close around his chin and lift his face upward. She bends her knees and leans towards him until she is on his eye-level. Her face is close enough for him to count the faint lines at the corners of her mouth, or her eyelashes, or the stars siphoned up in the black holes of her eyes. There is no hint of jest in her features anymore.

Her breath slips warmly over his lips as she speaks – and perhaps he must reconsider his non-belief in God, because it could be nothing other than a miracle that he can hear her over the thunder of his heart:

"You, Mr. Todd," whispers Nellie, "are not useless."

Then it's not her breath on his lips but her lips on his lips, thin and a little chaffed, and soft despite being a little chaffed, and very warm, beautifully warm –

He has not even had time to react before her lips are gone.

She reels backwards, a fish trapped on the end of a line, stumbling backwards away from the familiar waters, swaying side to side from her string, eyes caught unblinking and wide.

"Mr. Todd – I'm so – sorry," she chokes out, clutching at the air with great heaving gasps, trying frantically to breathe in the unfamiliar atmosphere. "I didn't mean to but – and then – but your wife, I could never – so sorry – "

Sweeney vaults to his feet. She shrinks from him as he nears, back slamming against the doorframe, but her internal agony seems to trump her physical ache: she does not even wince.

He seizes her by the shoulders, pulling her firmly from the doorframe, supporting her against his palms. She stares up at him; she has not looked away since she ended the kiss they never truly began; he does not think she has blinked once the entire time. Her hair is mused from reclining upon the sofa and smacking against the doorframe; her face is white, impoverished of all blood save for her lips, reposing like defiant rose petals on a blanket of snow.

God, she's beautiful.

Nellie's mouth continues to move but the syllables are soundless. Sweeney Todd, the near mute, has driven chatterbox Nellie Lovett to utter silence. The thought might make him laugh if he could remember what humor is.

"Shhh," he murmurs, stroking her shoulders, "shhh. Hush, love – "

Obstinate as ever even in her distress, these words prompt her to again make noise:

"Mr. Todd, I'm sorry, really so sorry, I don't know what came over me – but it'll never happen again, Lucy's your wife and I never – never ever – intended to try and take her place – "

Sweeney lays two fingers over her lips. They still at once under his touch.

"Mrs. Lovett," he says, swallowing hard, "Lucy is gone. I – I can clutch at my memories or stare at her pictures as long as I want – but it won't bring her back. I have to keep living . . . or else life will just pass me right by . . ."

She is still as stone beneath his hands, beneath the palm at her shoulder and the two fingertips over her mouth, unblinking and unyielding. He traces his fingers along her lips, then her cheek, then his whole hand cups her face.

His heart salvos in his head. If he could comprehend his motions, he would not dare be so rash and bold. As it is, he can scarcely comprehend the softness of her cheek – such a contrast to her roughened hands – or how much heat emits from her entire form, she who tries so hard to pretend she is cold. . . . But he knows the truth now and she can no longer pretend for him.

"Life is for the alive, my dear," he whispers, and then he brings his lips to hers.

It's everything and nothing like their first kiss – everything because all the sensations and feelings are the same – nothing because this time he can appreciate it, perceive it, before having it yanked away from him. And this time, it – _she_ – is not going anywhere.

Slowly, he draws her to him until their bodies touch. The fingertips of his left hand play over her shoulder, the fingertips of his right over her cheek. Her mouth opens against his in a soft sigh as her arms curl around his neck; she tastes of flour and gin and smoke. The salvo of his heartbeat turns to a thunder.

Their careful, tender touches can only last so long: very soon, they give way to clenches and bites and growls. Their raw need has burned too long without a wick for this to be anything but grasping and greedy.

He wonders if he is taking advantage of her in a vulnerable state. Then he feels the way her fingers clutch at his joints and scrabble at his clothes and knows he is not. This is not merely her knee-jerk response to his advances: this is an answer to something that has been stirring within her far longer than just this evening. It is all the consent that he requires to know that she needs this as much as he does. That she needs him as much as he needs her.

He feels giddily delirious, stupidly desirous, dizzy and awed and shaking with the fever brought about by unrequited love finally being reciprocated –

But no – it can't be – she must be tricking him as usual – it doesn't matter even if she is tricking him, of course, for he will take whatever he can, whatever she offers – but he must not allow himself to be deluded so, he must remain fully conscious that this is not real and never shall be –

But her lips are warm and her body contours perfectly to his and her fingers are needy and surely there is no way for her to fake the way her heartbeat throbs in tandem to his, surely she cannot force her heart to lie –

"Shall we go upstairs, love?" she breathes against his mouth, pulling back enough to gaze into his eyes.

"I . . ."

Surely the world is not actually swimming; surely she is not treading air, and he neither. He blinks at her once, twice, squinching his eyes, squeezing her tangible shoulder, the solidity of her waist.

"Love?" says Nellie, rubbing her fingers along the nape of his neck. "What d'you say? I mean – " the flush of her cheeks, formerly a sensuous pink, turns a mollified cerise " – we don't have to – I'd understand if you – if that was too much, what with Lu – "

In one decisive movement, he claps his mouth over hers. He will not allow her to say that name. Not here, not now. Not tonight. Tonight it is only them, only how much she means to him, only (he wishes, he hopes, he prays) what he is beginning to mean to her. What she feels isn't love yet – he will admit that, and he knows that – but it could be, for it is a need – and yes, love is love, and need is need, and they are distinct and parted things, able to walk hand-in-hand but also able to separate –

He knows all that.

He also knows how connected love and need are, like fire and wood – for how long can a log sit beneath a chimney without desiring to be burned? She needs him – she acknowledges him – she cares – she desires to be set aflame even if she has not yet realized . . . and he must kindle this desire while it fans before it flickers out forevermore.

Taking him by the hand, Nellie leads him up the stairs into his quarters. She conceals her smirk of victory stamped irrevocably across her face – conceals it in the cloak of discarded garments and sticky sweat and naked flesh and darkness – and he never notices.

The instant their coupling ends, she hurdles herself from the bed and yanks on her undergarments. The smirk is still a brand across her mouth.

He sits up on the mattress. The darkness conceals his expression as well as it conceals hers, but it cannot hide his eyes gleaming out at her, beacons of hope in the night, lighthouses that continue to shine even when no one requires help.

"You can sleep here tonight," he offers.

"No, thanks," she turns down courteously.

Silence. She fights with the laces of her corset and he sits on the mattress.

"I would like you to sleep here tonight," says Sweeney softly.

She refuses to look at him. "Can't, love, sorry. I've still got to cut up that bloke you sent down to the bakehouse tonight before he rots – and we can't have any townsfolk see me leaving your shop in the wee hours of the morning and getting suspicious – a man and a woman living together, y'know, people're bound to talk as it is, we shouldn't encourage that – and I hardly sleep anyway, don't need to keep you up too with all my tossing and turning – and – "

_And I can feign and lie and pretend until the cows come home when I've got daylight's bright, loud, blinding façade to hide behind . . . but in the silent, undisguised black hours of the late night and early morning, there's nothing to veil myself within._

Nellie clears her throat and jerks her dress on; it hangs like a whore's attire, slopping over one shoulder and dipping far down her breasts, along her emaciated form. She can't be bothered to fix herself for her descent downstairs. For one, no citizens will be walking Fleet Street this late at night. For two, she doesn't feel as though she deserves to fix herself.

"G'night, love," she says, and crosses to the door, shutting it behind her.

Sweeney falls back onto the bed, tensing all his limbs to prevent himself from shaking, clenching his jaw to prevent himself from screaming. Closing his eyes to prevent himself from crying.

It was a lie. It was a lie the whole time. And he had allowed himself to be deluded by her yet again. Didn't he understand that it only hurt himself worse in the end to permit himself to be deceived by her falsities? Why did he not have the strength to draw back now before her claws sunk any deeper?

She did not need him. She does not need him and never will. She is not the pile of logs desirous of being kindled by his flames. She is the tree in the forest, standing tall, never cut down, the fully formed bit of foliage that laughs from the very tops of its branches when a fledging flame thinks itself mighty enough to conquer the tower of timber.

Outside, Nellie creeps down the stairs. The night air nips her skin and makes her shiver; summer is slowly beginning to fade. Absurdly she flashes to Toby sitting beside her on the harmonium, how she had noticed the change in temperature then too – but not until he had leapt away.

In her memory, Toby sits on the harmonium bench and turns his face up to look at her. Then, even more absurdly, his face molds into Sweeney Todd's, turned down from his tall height to meet her gaze rather than craned upward from Toby's slight frame, expression rigid and unsmiling, devoid of all of the warmth in Toby's youthful features – but when his lips softly nudge hers –

"_Witch! Witch!"_

Her feet freeze, one pressed into a stair, the other half-raised in descent. The smirking brand across her mouth falls into nothingness.

"_Witch!"_

Her eyes skim over the banisters and down into the streets. Sure enough, Lucy Barker is there, mouth foaming and eyes roving in all directions – but her face is tipped upward in Nellie's direction, her pose purposeful, defiant. Her calls continue, shrieking and reverberating throughout the dead night:

"_Witch! Witch! Witch!"_

"Shuddup!" someone hollers from several roads down.

"_Witch!"_ Lucy screams in return. "She's the Devil's wife, she is, it's true – just smell it, sir, smell that air – smells that only can be smelt in hell!"

Nellie forces herself back to animation with a rattling inhale. She hurtles her feet down the stairs and dashes into her shop and bends over her sink, gasping, choking, clutching its edges until her knuckles turn white. All that comes up from her mouth is empty air, but her stomach juices continue to slosh and whisk about within her.

Finally, trembling, she wipes her mouth and drags herself from the counter. There is nothing to be done. Nothing more than she is doing at present.

_I may be a witch, Lucy, but I've only become one for you._

Her lips twist in a wry smile. How ironic that only the mad suspect what the rational do not; how fitting that only the insane are sane enough to recognize evil when they see it.

Her lips remained in their wry smile – but this time, when her stomach leaps upward and her neck cranes over the sink, more than empty air comes heaving from her throat.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: **"I have to keep living . . . or else life will just pass me right by . . ." Paraphrased from the original movie script of Sweeney Todd, during the lovely extended 'window scene' that was later greatly cut. Thus, sadly, I do not own that wonderful phrase.

Reviews are love, now and forever. Especially now more than ever, in fact. As those of you who've read my past works know, writing smexy times makes me a total Nervous Nellie (. . . sorry, I had to xD) and makes me crave feedback more than ever. So please let me know what you thought of the chapter, good or bad.


	6. Do You Think That Walls Can Hide You?

And so the household of 186 Fleet Street falls into the comfortable familiarity of domesticity for the boy, the barber, and the baker. Their days, respectively, are spent running errands and serving pies, shaving customers and slaughtering the occasional man who won't be missed, and baking pies and chatting up townsfolk. Their nights, also respectively, are spent drinking gin, butchering men to bits, and rumpling bedding (with some overlap of the doers here).

As happens with domesticity, time passes in relative monotone, days disappearing into weeks and weeks into months, a whirl of shop-keeping and recording and talking and listening and ruminating and brooding and pacing, pacing, pacing . . .

"Toby!"

"Coming! – 's'cuse me – "

"Ale there!"

"Right, mum!"

"Quick, now!" Nellie chirps, flapping her hand at him, whirling around to greet a new customer as she takes the money of another, gliding from person to person, serving pies, reheating food, refilling drinks, talking, laughing, grinning. Perfectly at ease.

Facades can become a comfortably familiar part of domesticity too.

"Just passing through London, y'say? You mean to tell me you've never been to our grand city before? Well, before you leave, darling, you simply must go stop by the new ballet. . . . No, I haven't seen it, but I've heard it's to die for and that no traveling experience's complete without it. Of course, a trip to London's never complete without seeing Big Ben either, or without a visit to Mr. Todd. . . . What d'you mean, you don't know of any Mr. Todd? He's as much of a staple of London as Big Ben, he is! Best barber in London without question – don't raise your eyebrows at me – I never lie, love. Ask anyone here, really, they'll tell you just the same. . . . Yes, yes, just right above my pie shop. Tell him I sent you up. He might just give you a shave free of charge. . . . No, 'course I'm not pulling your leg! It's his way of expressing his thanks for a visitor coming to his humble abode. . . . Yes, you're very welcome, darling."

And so yet another stranger mounts the staircase leading to the tonsorial parlor for the first and last time.

When she looks up, Sweeney's eyes glow like black moons from behind his window. She grins and winks at him. The black moons wax full with appreciation before vanishing from her sight. Her grin broadens.

Life could not be better: A booming business, food in her stomach, a child who is almost her own, a man who follows her every beck and whim –

_A woman unavenged, a bastard still walking free . . ._

Her stomach burns angrily and for a moment the façade crumbles. Then she pounds her feet into the ground and marches away to stack her empty tray with more pies and fills her head with her soothing drum.

Yes, fine, life _could _be better.

But it will be. Eventually. Someday.

_Soon._

Later that evening finds her reposed on the settee with no more energy allotted to her than to hold a gin glass in her left hand and a book on manners in the other. Even these simple tasks are daunting enough: her hands and eyelids weigh very heavy. She would not give up her current business situation for anything, and she may not require much sleep each night, but not even she has an endless well of energy. The book in her hand flops repeatedly over her face as her arm numbs; her drowsy state allows her enough energy to place the gin glass on a shelf before it too topples over her eyes.

Nellie has never been a good sleeper. Even when her body is utterly spent, her mind continues cantering about, spitting up thoughts, memories, soliloquies, wails, screams, images, plans, ten thousand musical instruments of recollections and grievances that refuse to sing in time to each other or to silence.

Tonight is no different. Tonight her brain sounds with strings keening for days past, reeds crying for the judge to come, winds calling back that he never will, brasses demanding vengeance, demanding what all of them are due, _soon, someday, never, now, oh God_ . . .

_Snick._

Her body jolts and she yelps, eyes flying open, startled from being jerked so abruptly from her swim between sleep and consciousness.

"Sorry," says Sweeney. He sits perched on the edge of the armchair, razor sliding in and out from its holder. He watches her with that usual moth-drawn-to-the-flame expression he wears in her presence.

_But who is really the moth between us? Who is more dependant upon the other?_

Blinking herself away from this hazily ridiculous thought – her mind is still detaching itself from the numbing fingers of slumber – she pulls herself into a sitting position on the settee. "How long you've been sitting there, love?"

Sweeney raises and lowers one shoulder. "A while."

She stretches her mouth into a grin and wags her finger at him. "Haven't we had this conversation, Mr. T? About announcing your presence when you come into a room so's not to startle everyone out of their wits? What were you doing watching me sleep, anyway? Quite a boring occupation, I'd think."

He presses his lips together but says nothing. Nellie raises her eyebrows – both because she expects more of an answer; she is no longer accustomed to utter silence from her lover – and also because she is genuinely perplexed. Really, she knows the man is salacious for her, but this is extreme even for him: people half-caught in slumber are not exciting to watch.

"Well, Mr. T?" she asks. "Why were you just watching me sleep? 'S'quite boring, y'know. The picture never changes. Isn't a person actually doing something more interesting?"

_Because that's what you do when you're in love,_ he thinks, looking at her, unable to bring himself to say the words aloud. _Because you are perfectly content just watching the rise of their chest, the slight movements beneath their eyelids, the sublime stillness and tranquility never captured in a moment of activity. Because sometimes the most beautiful moments are those without activity._

"Well, whatever your reason," says Nellie, realizing he's not going to reply, sinking back into the cushions, "don't do it again. Startles me, it does."

"Sorry," he says again, though not as genuinely this time, eyes cloudy and yet focused upon her.

The corner of her lips lifts up in comprehension. _Oh._ So that's why he's not talking. His mind is far too preoccupied with everything _but_ the matter of words.

Smirking, Nellie stretches to her feet, then slinks towards him. "Sorry, love," she purrs, "I didn't realize you wasn't interested in _conversation_ just now." She perches herself on his knees and canters her fingers along the length of his arm, leaning her head into his shoulder. Trailing her lips along his neck, she whispers, "We don't have to talk anymore."

He shifts beneath her. She pulls back to find him staring, brow furrowed and mouth frowning, at some point over her head.

"Actually, Nellie," he says, "I _am_ interested in conversation just now."

Her eyebrows raise. The man never ceases to surprise her. A bloody wonder to the utmost degree. She stops her seduction attempts but remains seated in his lap; she quells some strange disappointment stirring in her stomach by telling herself it is simply because she spends her entire day talking that she doesn't want to right now.

"Alright, love," says Nellie. "And just what would you like to talk about, hmm?"

Face still carved into a pensive scowl, he shrugs.

"Well, that's not much help," she informs him. "And since you didn't much like my conversation topic, I think it's your turn to suggest something."

His frown twitches to one side as though fighting off a sneeze, then straightens. All the while, he continues a staring contest with the wall over her head. Just as stubborn as he is, Nellie merely adjusts herself in his lap, resting her cheek on his shoulder and leaning into his unyielding chest, holding her silence. He'll break his fast from words eventually.

Sure enough, after three minutes time, he growls, his voice rumbling in his chest and vibrating in her skull, "The future."

Nellie lolls her neck around so the back of her scalp leans against his shoulder and her eyes stare up at the underside of his tense, smooth-shaven jaw. "What about the future, love?"

His jaw shifts, struggling over syllables for a moment, before stilling. She watches his Adam's apple bob.

"What will happen in the future," he says.

She laughs. "Why, isn't that obvious, love? Haven't we gone over this time and time again – and isn't it usually _me_ chatting about the future? I'd figured you'd be sick of hearing about it again and again. Why, we're going to get him, you and me – we're going to wring all the blood out of his vicious neck and watch it all spill out onto the floor . . ." Her eyes fog over just from speaking the familiar words aloud. "But first, of course, we're going to remind him who we are, and who Lucy Barker was – not that he can feel guilt, but I want him to taste his murderers' name on his lips just before he dies . . . I want him to know what's coming to him just before it does, and for what purpose – have his final sentence be one that _he_'s committed _to_ rather than one he commits to someone else, and – "

"No," says Sweeney.

" – and then – _no_? Whaddya mean, _no_?"

"I mean, yes," says Sweeney, his jaw shifting faster now in strange chewing motions between each of his words, "yes, of course that's what will happen – but I meant after that. After he's dead. What happens then?"

"What a stupid question, love," she snorts. "After that, we – we just go on as before."

Truth be told, she's never considered it. Truth be told, her mind can't picture an 'after' any further than Turpin's blood dripping in glorious vindication all over her floor.

But, well, now that she _is_ considering it . . . her words are true. Naturally they _will _just go on as before. Well, maybe not precisely as before. Once Turpin is gone, she won't need Sweeney around. One less hassle in her life, having him persistently at her heels and making her well-placed steps stumble. Then again, Sweeney does make her business successful, and then again, she does like having money, and then again, there is still much injustice to liberate the world of. . . .

Well, she'll consider it when the time comes. After Turpin is mangled by her hands, after Lucy is at last avenged, after Nellie's soul can at last rest on Earth before its inevitable descent into hell . . . yes. She'll consider it then.

"How is that?" Sweeney questions her.

"How's what, now?"

"How will we just go on as before?"

"Well, we – we just do, that's all," splutters Nellie. "What am I s'posed to say to a stupid question like that, eh, love?"

He still isn't looking at her, just some spot on the wall. Normally, she doesn't mind he not looking at her. In fact, normally, she greatly appreciates the rare occasions he stops gawking at her like she's a circus animal on display.

Today, his refusal to meet her eyes increases her irritability.

Since she can't glare into his eyes, she glares at the underside of his jaw, wondering if perhaps the heat of her gaze will scorch his skin and force him to tip his face down to avoid further burns.

"You once wanted to live by the sea," Sweeney murmurs. "I was wondering if that still held true."

Oh – she did once desire to live by the sea, didn't she? Yes, that had been her once, long ago, hadn't it . . . that silly little girl whose entire world revolved around dainties and romantic ideals and fancies of becoming a lady . . .

_Was that really me?_

It seems so improbable now, so unlikely. Sweeney Todd may be the one bearing the new name, but it is she who bears the new soul, irrevocably altered by her past. Oh, no doubt he is altered by the past too, but to a far lesser degree. He is the same man; she is a different woman who merely happens to house the body of someone who came before her. Someone who died long ago.

"Nellie?"

He looks at her now, face turned minutely down and to the side, their noses and eyes and lips a breath apart.

She snaps her eyes away from his and lifts her head from his shoulder, positioning her back against his chest so both of their gazes are aimed in the same direction: far ahead at nothing.

"Yes, the sea," she says easily. "Of course that's what I want, love. I didn't realize you was thinking _that_ far ahead. I'm surprised you still remember that, truth be told. Dear God, d'y'know, I've had that dream since I was a little slip of a thing – when my rich Aunt Nettie used to take me down to the seaside on August bank holiday . . . I didn't know you shared that same dream, love . . ."

Her words flow on but his ears cease to listen, heart rattling too loudly in his head for comprehension of any other noises.

Because he doesn't share that dream. He doesn't like the sea. He never liked the sea. And he knows that she no longer likes it either. But the Nellie Lovett of sixteen years ago did. The Nellie Lovett of sixteen years ago desired nothing more than to one day own a little cottage on the shore, spending her days and nights listening to the swell of the ocean, the call of the gulls, the rustle of sand between toes. And pretend though she might that that woman is dead, he knows better. He knows that woman filled with daring and dreams and love lives on. He just has to locate her beneath the miles of facades and grievances and vengeances and penances she's covered herself with, that's all. She will be found at the sea. He knows she will be found there.

Or, at least, he knows he must tell himself this in order to survive.

* * *

><p><strong>AN:** I apologize for the shortness and uneventfulness of this chapter. It was necessary in order to progress to much more exciting things in the next installment . . . ;]


	7. For The Alive

Days turn to weeks, and weeks turn to months, and then a year has passed and August has arrived once more, with Sweeney Todd staring out his window trying to clutch his razor and his dreams in his fist, with Nellie Lovett pacing in her bakehouse trying to rid the image of Lucy hanging onto the doorframe from her mind.

A year.

Everything is different and nothing has changed. The barber and the baker grow tired. Weary. Desperate for changes and yet clinging to stability. So their lives – or their living deaths, or their dances through hell, or whatever the existences of demon humans are called – go on.

"I don't know why I let her get to me tonight. God knows it's not the first time she's come hobbling around my shop, chattering and screaming away at me."

She whacks her butcher's knife into the flesh of the man's arm and tosses the bits of fat to the side. Thankfully, there isn't much on this fellow; he was a well-built piece of stock. A little bit of fat is necessary, of course, for flavor, but every once in a while Sweeney sends down a bloke that's nearly all blubber and no actual brawn. Largely useless supplies, those are – but it'd be a waste to throw the entire carcass out without searching for the meaty bits.

"I don't get it," she continues, stripping away at the chest now, cleaving the tender meat around the rib cage. "Something inside me just – snapped. It's been almost a year now since Todd showed up in my shop . . ."

Nellie often talks to the corpses like this. Who else will listen to her, after all? Well, certainly Sweeney would – the man fears the sound of his own voice, but would happily drown himself in hers if he could – but she can't confide in him. He's already too attached to her. She needs his attachment, certainly – she needs him to string along if she ever wants vengeance to be hers – but he's become more fond of her than she ever thought he would. Than she ever should have allowed. What she once thought to be a foolish and naïve lust has turned darker, deeper, steadier. If she told him to, he'd walk to the ends of the Earth, even if only to bring the shade of a smile to her wasted face.

No, the very last thing he needs is further encouragement by she saying aloud the thoughts she never reveals. The last thing he needs is to feel her tangible pulse beneath his palm when in truth her heart beats only from rote, from memory . . . not because it needs to keep her alive.

"Mr. T's been back a year," she prattles on, "a whole bleeding year, and what've I to show for it? A better establishment, sure, and some damn good pies – don't worry, dear, I'll never lay my mouth on you," she assures the man with something like tenderness, peeling away a layer of fat over his belly and throwing it to the oven. "I don't eat my wares, I just sell them.

"But what," she demands of the corpse, "apart from a better business, have I got, hmm?"

He does not answer, only stares at her with glassy eyes and a slack mouth.

"Nothing," she informs him. "I've got nothing. Absolutely fucking nothing." She plunges her hands into the man's middle until she's up to her elbows – literally – in offal. She throws these into the oven; they're no good. "The judge is still alive and well – the bloody – and I'll never get to him, I'll never get my hands on him, not after Todd ruined it all . . ."

She fists her fingers into the refuse and says on a choked cry, "But I ruined it too. I ruined it too, years ago when Turpin stopped trusting me . . . I had him right in my hand so many times – right in my damn bed – and every time something went wrong. . . ."

She feels as though she's being torn into pieces: the words might be leaving her mouth, but they still pound within her body, systematically and brutally shredding her to pieces. Like her skin is sewn together and the seamstress has decided that the pattern is no good. Like the seamstress now claws at her with a seam ripper, pricking apart her outsides inch by inch and leaving her with nothing to cloak herself within, nothing to hide inside of, all her guts and blood and guilt and misery and facades spilt on the bakehouse floor –

A shudder runs the length of her body and she hunches her shoulders to her ears, fingers digging deeper into the man's belly, in an effort to keep what's left of herself stitched together.

"I can throw as many blaming looks at Sweeney as I want," she says, coughing up the words from her throat, "and he'll gladly take my blame and try to heal my pain every time – " a broken, bitter laugh " – as if that's possible . . . but it's not his fault, it's mine, and we both know it – all my fault that that bastard's alive and breathing and fucking around and getting away with what he did all those years ago – "

And her last stitches fall away.

She vaults to her feet and hurdles the offal dripping from her hands against the bakehouse walls and lets out a keen from the very bottom of her own intestines.

She's done all this before she knows what she's done. There's a bedlam of silence in her ears and a haze of red in front of her eyes, and the both of them prevent her from comprehending anything until she blinks, swimming back to herself. Only then does she hear the echoes of her wail sounding within the room, see the viscera smeared on the walls and the floor.

Shame washes over her. Hands shaking, she strides towards the wall to pick up the mess of entrails.

But the needlework once holding her together is gone, now and forever, thread and cloth both crumpled in a heap somewhere she'll never find. Leaving only this – only whatever's left of her mangled soul – raw and naked and impure. Unable to manipulate or pretend with a whirl of smiles and chatter as she usually does. Entirely at the mercy of whatever aborigine lies beneath.

So her feet swerve her away from the innards, leaving them puddled on the ground, and direct her up the bakehouse stairs. Her feet pound through her parlor, into the pie shop, out among the night, up the stairs to his quarters –

He stands by his bureau, polishing a blade, but looks up when the door slams open. The corners of his lips curl upward when she enters. It is a hesitant smile, but it a true one. It is the smile created for and given to only her.

She doesn't notice. She wouldn't care even if she did notice. But she can't notice, not tonight. She's unclothed and out of control – she's unwillingly surrendered command and given it to this base creature within her – and she can no longer notice what she normally simply wouldn't care about.

Nellie stalks towards the barber, seizes him by his lapels, and cudgels her lips against the smile she can't see.

His arms surround her at once, contouring her body to his own, as she traps one arm around his neck and fists his lapels tighter in her fingers, smearing the dead bloke's innards over his clothes and skin. He tastes of gin and sweat, his natural cologne of blood mingling with it; she slants her mouth more firmly against his, smothering herself in him.

His hands tremble with an ecstasy of disbelief as they run down her body. Never before has this happened – never before has she come to him like this, kissing him with such need, imprisoning him in her grip as though she fears his escape – it's the way he normally imprisons her for the few moments she dares to become his – not that he ever could escape her, not that he ever would . . .

Is she at last choosing to live beyond the faded memories she clings to? Is she at last letting go of her vendetta of fifteen years and gripping reality, the present, instead?

Is she at last realizing she is alive?

Both her arms are snared around his neck now, his personal noose that he never wants to be cut free from. Hands quivering still more violently, he trails them both up the length of her sides, along her shoulders and neck, to cup her face in his palms. His fingertips play like those of a newborn babe's – shyly curious, full of overwhelming wonder – across her face.

"Nellie," he murmurs when she pulls away to gasp for breath. He presses his lips against her hairline, again and again and again, a man in the desert suffering from a parched throat that can never be slaked even after living for years among civilization. "Nellie –Nellie – Nellie . . ."

A growl rumbles within her chest and resonates within his own, smashed together as they are. She shoots up on her tiptoes to again crush her mouth to his, but he pulls back before she can. He holds her face in his fingers, keeping them apart, so he can look into her eyes.

"You're different tonight," he says.

She snorts and rolls her eyes. Her hands tug impatiently at his cravat. "You bothered by that, love?"

"No," he breathes, swallowing. The irises and pupils of his eyes are invisible in this black hour of night, but the whites gleam purer than the moon. "I just want to know what's changed."

What's changed? She snorts again but doesn't answer. There is no answer. Not one that satisfies the unclothed animal within her; not one that sounds rational when ascribed actual words. Because not even with all the words in the English language can this thing burning her from the inside out make sense:

Because she needs to feel something real and warm beneath her hands that isn't from the middle of a dead bloke's stomach:

Because nothing can drive away the fury and purpose and pain that always dwells within her veins and turns her into this beast that is both predator and prey – and she doesn't want to drive this beast away, because she can't forget the reason she's still here – but some days she longs to forget, even if just for a moment, even if she never can:

Because even if her heart pulses only from perfunctory memory, she still needs to hear it thunder in her ears. Just to hear thunder one last time. Just to make sure she can still hear in this dead world.

"Nellie?" Sweeney whispers to her, reminding her of his presence, stroking his thumbs across her cheekbones.

She growls again. She cannot answer him; why can't he ever just accept things as they are and not question everything? Why must he insist on making her alive again when she died long ago? Isn't it enough to have her in his bed, isn't that what he wanted more than anything for nearly two bloody decades?

Breathing hard and angry, she grips the crotch of his pants.

The whites of his eyes disappear in a blink and he gives a choked whimper.

"Y'know, Mr. Todd, you don't talk all that often," she hisses, striding forward, forcing him to backpedal his steps until his back hits his bureau, grinding into its edges.

His eyes open again and gleam at her in the darkness.

"But when you do, love," she spits, "you really just don't know when it's time to end the conversation."

Another choked whimper escapes from his lips. She doesn't know if it's the beginning of a reply to her words or not, but decides not to take her chances: her mouth sears his with another kiss, one of her hands pushing more firmly against his groin as her other snakes up his neck to seize his hair.

For a moment, he does not move. Then – her fingers dancing against him, her wild locks caressing his skin, her perfume of spices and blood kissing his nostrils, her mouth biting and stroking and tasting his skin – he finds his arms enveloping her once more, his lips grasping against hers.

She closes her eyes and moans into his mouth, drowning in his taste, his scent, his touch, his need – drowning in this moment, these sensations – hands snatching and claiming flesh, hot breath on her face, skin against skin – sensations so pure in their impurity, so perfect in their imperfection – zinging through her veins like a drug, muddling everything around her until nothing's clearly defined. Until he is all that keeps her upright.

Even the joy of having her this close, having her willing be his, cannot rain out his confusion, his pain. . . . He thought he had been so close – that she had been so close to realizing what he meant to her, realizing that they could have a future together, realizing that her heart beats on even if Lucy's doesn't – but perhaps she still is close – there is without question something different about her tonight . . .

Whatever it is, he's not about to let it go.

He wants to take his time, to enjoy whatever change has been wrought within her, deliciate in the way she's thrumming with so much life in his arms. He pulls his mouth away from hers and carefully kisses each of her eyelids, one at a time. He trails his lips up the curve of her nose until they meets her widow's peak, then continues along the arch of her forehead, her cheek, her jawbone, tracing her features, creating a halo of kisses upon her face.

_A halo for what?_ she wonders. For protection against demons? How can he think to protect them from themselves?

She closes her eyes and seals her lips together. She tries to tolerate this slow intimacy and let him do as he pleases. She needs him to remain happy and by her side if she ever plans to extract her revenge, as there isn't many a man who'd happily do as he does each day.

But she doesn't have the patience for it. She doesn't want slow intimacy. She wants to forget. Intimacy unsettles her; intimacy makes her remember all the more. It makes her remember what she should be doing, what she should not be allowing herself to forget for even a moment –

_Do you think Lucy can ever forget? What about Turpin – should you let him forget and get away with it? And _you_? You, you worthless slut, you think you deserve to forget just because it wasn't _you_ who suffered?_

A keen tears itself from her throat – but unlike the one in the bakehouse, this one sounds with agony rather than anger. A wounded animal rather than a starved predator.

Sweeney's face lifts from hers in horror.

"Nellie – "

"No more talking," she snarls as she again claps her mouth over his, swallowing any protests he might be about to make, dragging his leather coat down his shoulders and halfway off his arms. She fights to get the thing off, jerking at the garment with hands made clumsy by urgency. The instant she hears the leather _snick_ against the floor she starts on his shirt, snapping open buttons and ripping fabric in her haste to feel him naked against her, to have him be just as nude outside as she feels inside, just as unable to hide.

_That's pointless. He never hides from you anyway._

Pushing that thought away, she succeeds in freeing him from his shirt and cravat, and scampers her greedy hands over his bare flesh. So solid, so warm, so whole. So unlike the man in the bakehouse, whose greasy innards are still blotted and congealed to her fingers, smearing stickily against Sweeney's skin.

Now he rips off her clothes with just as much haste as she does to his. He's accepted her raw and naked creature – maybe he's even found his own. Maybe they can both be stripped of all these facades, she dares to believe without believing it for a moment, maybe they can both be liberated from all these layers of pain.

Somehow they've wound up on his bed rather than she jamming him against the bureau, her back against the mattress, he hovering a breath above her.

_He's manipulated me, for once, rather than the other way around,_ she thinks through her fog, blinking up at him.

And then he lowers himself upon her and traces his lips along the shell of her ear and her scrambled thoughts scatter away into the sweaty, windless, August night.

As he strips each morsel of fabric from her body, his fingers brush against the newly exposed flesh, pricking wildfire across her skin. His lips blaze across her face, her neck, her shoulders, her chest, drawing noises from her mouth that make them both shudder.

She tears off his trousers, relishing the tossing away of this last bit of cloth separating them, pressing their naked forms together. Her mouth stamps against his collarbone, nipping at the skin and savoring its salt, losing herself when she breathes him in.

He's murmuring her name in her ear again, over and over, along with soft things she does not want to hear, things that make the forgetful ecstasy fade and the cold reality of thought and duty and vengeance return, slamming like a penance between her shoulder blades. When she snarls a warning into the skin of his shoulder, he falls silent at once. The whites of his eyes swim towards her, reverent and burning ivory, waiting for direction. For some reason, the expression only further shoves the penance of reality against her back.

Her eyes close and her face presses again into his shoulder, unable to stare at either him or the reflection of herself in the back of his bright black gaze. She wraps her arms around his neck and wraps her legs around his waist. Even despite the feeble resistance still balled in his muscles, he meshes to her willing and without hesitation, fits himself against her, becomes one with her. Not only willing, but so naturally, so seamlessly . . .

Perhaps she never needed seams, she finds herself thinking wildly, burying her face in his wiry locks. Perhaps she was supposed to have the stitches yanked out of her and leave her sewn façade in a heap on the floor long ago.

Her fingers lacerate his back with senselessly perfect designs as she bites his shoulder to prevent herself from crying out; his hands curl into her scalp as he whispers in her ear words unintelligible to the world. They move together; they tremble against each other; they crush one another tighter against their own body when they imagine the other to be slipping away – even though, in truth, they can be no closer.

Perhaps, she thinks, she was always meant to be seamless.

Then at last both of their bodies are motionless. Then at last they're both naked and raw and their lungs are breathing in tandem, hearts beating in tandem – and certainly it is just from perfunctory memory that her heart feels the need to hammer against her rib cage like this – but it's delightfully loud and hot and real and she's going to cling to it for all she's worth.

She lies on her back and sweats and quivers. She's never felt such bliss in being still.

But he is not still – even now, in the stillness of the afterwards, he's not still – fingers caressing her arm, lips brushing her jawbone, face nuzzling her face . . .

She rolls onto her side and curls into a fetal position. Can't he let her revel in her momentary paradise? Does he feel compelled to destroy everything and insist that his yanking her from the past is for her own good? Must he refuse to speak with his lips and instead do so with his eyes – those maddeningly darkly lit eyes – and say that it is only because he is determined to bring her back to life?

Can't he read the reply in her eyes just as clearly? The reply that he surely can't fancy himself Jesus and she Lazarus, not when Jesus soils his hands with a daily dosage of murders and Lazarus seeks revenge rather than love?

Sweeney curls up next to her on the mattress, contouring to her once again, his chest against her back, his legs embracing the undersides of her calves and thighs.

She closes her eyes.

He keeps his open, wide, penetrating nothing in the darkness. Her flesh is soft against his, damp and supple. But she is not supple – not to him, never to him – and when she is, it is forced, mandatory, a purposeful surrender to make him happy . . . it barely counts.

And yet almost without her volition she surrendered tonight. . . .

She's lost to him again now, entirely within control of herself. He presses against her tighter but he might as well not be there. And it is this sudden aching loss, this pain of not grasping what she so nearly gave him, that urges him to whisper the words he's never been able to speak to either her or himself before:

"Do you love her, Nellie?"

She opens her eyes and blinks at the wall. "What? Who?"

His breath on her neck tickles her skin and makes the fine hairs stir, the flesh goosebump.

"Lucy," he says.

Nellie bites her lip, but not because she doesn't know how to manipulate this truth as she is prone to. She doesn't know what the truth _is_.

"I . . . I don't know," she says, something in the darkness and her raw creature and his breath on her neck compelling her, for once, to honesty. "It doesn't really matter either way. 'Cause either way you look at it . . . every breath I take is for her."

_But it isn't about her anymore,_ Sweeney's heart dares to murmur what his lips cannot. _You've lost her in your search for revenge . . . and yourself._

_And you, Todd? You haven't lost yourself trying to recreate a pulse in _her_?_

He swallows. No. That is entirely different. Nellie is different. Lucy is gone and buried beneath the Earth; Nellie is only buried within herself. Nellie can still be saved.

Nellie's skin stings as a thousand needles divulge into her flesh. She digs her nails into her palms and clenches her jaw to keep herself from screaming in pain:

The seamstress has returned.

The seamstress' hands are bursting with new needles, textiles, and threads. She is busy, employing all her workers to plunge their pins into Nellie's flesh. They enfold her within compactly-woven facades, thread weaving in and out and in and out and in and out of her skin, fingers frantic with the need to repair the damage rent. Nellie grips her tongue between her teeth so hard she tastes blood, refusing to make a sound as the needles rip through her, cloths sturdier and stitches tighter than ever before –

Swallowing, fingers trembling, Sweeney threads an arm around her waist and rests his cheek upon the back of her shoulder, relaxing against her tense form. He closes his eyes and prays to no one that she will stay with him tonight.

Then his arm and cheek smack against the mattress.

He throws open his eyes to see her wrenching her clothes back on. Her shift is tossed on backwards; her pantalets are torn and consequentially do not stay on her hips; her corset strings have come out of their loops and she fights with them in the dark to set the contraption right. He half-rises from the bed to help her, but she gives up before he can.

Yanking her dress on over her tangle of undergarments, never once looking back at him, she flees his room.

He swallows again and shifts his body, coiling into her familiar imprint upon the cot, pressing his face into her indentation, strangling himself in her scent. Her hollow in this mattress isn't her and never will be – but if he can pretend, even for a moment, as he eclipses his face in the bedding . . .

* * *

><p><strong>AN:** . . . make a review glutton happy and drop a morsel of feedback into her collection tin?


	8. Keep Moving

_Thud, thud, thud, thud, scuff, thud-thud-thud, thud . . ._

Pacing. It's a ritual. Hearing her footsteps against the ground, the way the cadence changes as her boots come in contact with smooth pavement or wooden boards or cobbled stones or bakehouse stairs or matted carpet; feeling the muscles in her thighs and calves strain then untense, the joint of her knee swinging out then in; letting the rhythmic vibrations in her feet travel up her spine and attempt to numb her aching, spinning, twisting mind.

Pacing is a metronome of comfort, one that she has no plans of relinquishing anytime soon.

Often a symphony of instruments joins the metronome, keeping time with it, each contributing a different melody. The concerts vary from day to day, differing based on her location, manner, and mood. The assortment of musical apparatuses and notes in her ears keeps things different enough for continued interest and similar enough for continued reassurance.

Today her philharmonic takes place in her pie shop. It's a Sunday morning, atypical for work, but Nellie has certainly never gotten this far in life by being typical. Besides, she hates being still and without a metronome of movements to tame the dissonant, unending screeches of her mind.

_Swish-thud, swish-swish-thud-thud, swish-swish-swish-thud, _the syncopation of her hands alternatively kneading and pounding against the dough.

_Ffffsh, fffsh, fffsh, fffsssssh, _the refrain of her rolling pin flattening dough.

_Slop slop, slop slop, slop,_ the chant of the meat as it meets the unbaked crust.

_Scuff, scuff, scuff, eeeeeek, slam,_ the tune of her feet striding over to her small stove-oven, forcing its old hinges to wheeze open and allow her to reheat pies, then shutting the door again.

_Swish-swish-thud . . . swish-thud-thud-thud, slop slop slop . . . slop . . . fffssssh, fsssh, swish-thud, swish-thud-thud, slop slop . . . ffsssh, ffssssh, fsssssh . . . scuff, scuff, eeeeeeeek, slam . . ._

All that exists is her song. Because if she permits herself to entertain thoughts of last night – because if she allows herself to hear even a strain of another melody – her metronome will break. And everything else will follow.

So conscious of her tune, of fitting each instrument into the rhythm of her metronome, she instantly becomes aware of the discordant boom, boom, boom, boom, the notes his feet always create. Then comes the telltale area of _creak creak creak,_ the ditty of the stairs leading to his shop; _wheeeek-eeek-eeek, twinkle-twinkle,_ the chords of her rusty door and irksomely cheerful bell; _boom, boom,_ the overtone of his feet again, resonating like thunder no matter what surface they strike against, so unlike her own feet, continually adapting with their musical partner that is the ground to innovate new melodies . . .

"Nellie?"

"G'morning, love," she twitters, never ceasing her song. _Swish-thud, swish-swish-thud._ "You're up early for a Sunday." _Fssssssh, fsh, fsh._ "Well, I guess you'll be wanting your breakfast, eh?" _Slop slop slop, fsssssssh, scuff, scuff._ "How's porridge sound?" _Eeeeeeeek slam._

"Nellie," says Sweeney. His song is silent.

It only makes her more determined to drown him out.

_Swish-swish-thud swish-thud-thud-thud slop slop slop slop fffssssh fsssh swish-thud swish-thud-thud slop slop ffsssh, ffssssh, fsssssh scuff scuff eeeeeeeek slam._

"You just going to stand there saying my name all day, love?" Nellie asks with a hack of a giggle. _Swish-thud swish-swish-thud fsssssssssssh fsh fsh._ "Or are you planning on starting an actual conversation sometime?" _Slop slop slop scuff scuff eeeek slam. _"Mind you, we could just play a name game and go back and forth like so, but that'd get real tedious right quick – "

"_Nellie."_

Knowing what he wants and that he will persist until he gets it, hating herself for bending to his wishes, she forces her eyes to his. Everything she cannot confront – Lucy, the judge, his feelings for her that have grown far further than she should have ever permitted, blood, death, murder, last night – stares back at her through twin dark mirrors.

So Sweeney throws her completely off-balance when he grunts, "Have you had breakfast yet?"

"Wh-what? Oh – erm, no, I haven't – "

"We should have breakfast," says Sweeney.

"Right – yes, yes, of course, it's past eight, I s'pose we should – well, I'm not really hungry myself, perhaps I'll just have a spot of tea, but what would you like, love? Can I fix you up some of that porridge? Or, if you'd prefer – "

"You should have breakfast," says Sweeney.

Her strings are unraveling again and splitting her fabric apart – or maybe they had never resewn themselves – maybe she had only managed to flee by gathering the broken scraps to her chest, pretending yet again –

Either way, this ends right now. Either way, she will sew herself together right now.

"Alright, love," she says calmly, setting down her pie supplies. "I'll get started on that porridge for you, and I'll nip at it myself later on when I'm hungry. You just sit yourself down and I'll bring it to you right quick, eh?"

She procures a pan, throws some oats and water into it, then puts the mixture on the stove as she goes to root around for sugar and sea salt.

"Nice day out, ain't it?" she asks him as she stands on her tiptoes to grab these ingredients.

Stupid man, why is he still standing?

"Perhaps we'll go by the park later, what d'you say?"

Did she not explicitly tell him to sit?

"I could pack a nice picnic lunch, Toby could take along his new kite – it'd be a lovely time."

His eyes will not leave her – but she refuses to meet his gaze as she goes about sprinkling the seasonings into the porridge.

"After all, it won't much longer that we can do things like that."

His eyes.

"I mean," she says, clenching her fingers tightly around a spoon as she plunges it into the porridge and begins to stir, "y'know, what with August drawing to a close and bringing the end of summer along with it."

Those eyes.

"'Course, I do like fall too, all the changing colors and whatnot, but there's just something about sunshine that's very pleasant."

Those eyes coming nearer as the body damned enough to possess them strides toward her, closer, closer . . .

"And I know this's a stupid thing of a Londoner to say, but sometimes all that rain that we get during all the other months starts to wear on my nerves – "

His fingers close around her hand stirring porridge and arrest all her movement.

"Nellie."

Unable to accept defeat even when no other path lies ahead, she glares up at him with not a hint of weakness. "We going to just stand here all day, love?" she asks, wiggling her hand within his, eyebrows arching towards her hairline. "It might be Sunday, but that doesn't mean I like just hovering idle all day long. I've got to keep moving."

He folds his fingers more securely over the back of her palm, molding the callused, floured flesh to his own.

"Nellie," he says again, "can I ask you a question?"

She weaves her lips into a grin. "I think you just did, love."

But when he doesn't so much as flash his eyes in the remembrance of a smile, the corners of her mouth can't help but twitch.

Sweeney swallows, closes his eyes, refuses to pray to any god, inhales, parts his eyelids, looks down at her, and asks, "What did Lucy look like?"

She barks a laugh. "Shouldn't you know, love? She was _your_ wife, after all."

"I'm not asking me," says Sweeney without inflection. "I'm asking you."

Her face crumples into perplexion, then shock, then returns to perplexion, eyebrows and lips bunching towards her nose.

"Well," she says, "I – she – well."

Of course Lucy's face is in her mind instantly – she sees the woman nearly every day, after all, what with always having to throw her out of the shop – but she can't describe that face to him. He doesn't know that face. Well, he does, technically speaking – but he doesn't connect that face with Lucy Barker, and she will keep it that way.

"Y'see, she had this – I mean – that is to say – Lucy – was . . ."

So it follows, then, that she should describe to him the face that he remembers, the face he associates with his wife. Her eyes scrunch around hazy memories, scouring over the fog of the past, to describe precisely that face to him . . .

"Can't really remember her, can you?" Sweeney murmurs.

A tongue of fury lashes through her body at the sentence – the accusation – the truth.

"Of course I remember her," she spits, wrenching her hand from his and striding to the other end of the counter. "You think I've forgotten who she was? You think I'd fight so hard for so many years to avenge a woman I didn't remember? I can see you don't believe me – you need more proof than angry words? Alright, how's this, love: she was beautiful and young and had yellow hair and why the fuck do you need me to tell you this anyhow? _You're_ the one who keeps her picture on your bureau upstairs – "

She continues firing out her angrily scattered phrases. He stands at the opposite end of the room and lets her.

After two more minutes of this tirade, she begins to deflate, folding over herself, head slumping forward on her chest and elbows sagging against the counter, back hunching.

He approaches her like a hunter does a wild dog: intimately knowledgeable with its habits and ways, but nonetheless cautious. Her eyes trail his movements but she does not move. Taking that as a sign of acceptance – or at least not denial – he slips a hand onto her shoulder and softly caresses her skin.

Words are stuck in his throat again, as stuck as they were that first day he walked back into her shop after a decade and a half, and even all the progress he's made in the past year with talking can't help him now: he's gone as mute and dumb as a beggar.

He sets his jaw. He _will_ do what he told himself he would. He _will_ accomplish what kept him awake all night. This is his chance – this might be the last time she is so exposed to him, or anyone –

This is the moment and_ goddammit_ he will speak.

"You've – you've got to leave all this behind you now," he says, fingers stilling upon her skin, coming to a rest against the curving sinew between shoulder and neck. "She's gone."

_She's not, she's not gone,_ Nellie's mind keens, sealing her lips together as her stomach threatens to retch up all the food she's barely eaten for the past week, _she's not,_ _oh, if you only knew, if you only could know without being blindsighted by it, she's not gone, she's never been gone –_

But hasn't she? Hasn't she been since that day she swallowed the arsenic? Perhaps sooner? It had not been a lie, when she'd told him Lucy was gone. The radiant woman who'd lived above her with a hapless husband and gorgeous baby was not the same woman who sprawled in bed for days with dust accumulating in her home and tears freezing to her cheeks: all these two women shared was a name, much like the Nellie of sixteen years ago and the Nellie of now.

But what mattered of her lives on – her spirit lives on – and that deserves to be avenged, that deserves to be preserved, held up forever on a pedestal – and Nellie must never forget the wrongs that were committed against her or how pure and beautiful she was before all this –

His fingers glide up her shoulder and cup the back of her neck. They sting like a viper's fangs, scalding her skin, infusing her veins with fire, making the bile in her stomach heave upward even stronger than before . . .

His other hand settles at her elbow, pulling her up from the counter and into a standing position. One arm wraps around her back, the other around her shoulder blades, its fingers still curled against her neck. They stand chest to chest, leg to leg, eye to eye, matching breath for breath, as he supports her in a hug that feels more like a prison.

"Life is for the alive, my dear," he whispers.

She watches his lips move, the subtle way he manages to use the least amount of movement possible for every syllable.

"Maybe . . . maybe not like I dreamed . . . and maybe not like you remember . . ."

He's never believed in his dreams anyway, and she's never believed she could return to her ignorant life of before. This doesn't explain why she's shaking in his arms – or why she isn't pulling away.

His fingers close around an errant lock of her hair hovering over her left eye. He tucks it behind her ear.

"But we could get by," he says.

He ceases movement then. He does not think she has moved since she slumped over the counter. She's looking at him, but he can't tell if she heard his words, much less comprehended them. Were it not for the heartbeat thumping in a rhythm directly opposite of his against his chest, he would fear she was dead.

He refuses to count the minutes (perhaps hours) that they stand there. If he counts them, if he allows the habitual metronome of his mind to soothe him, it will only agitate him further: because he knows that she too lives by the pulse of the metronome, and the fact that she has entirely abandoned it means that her life either no longer holds a beat, or that she no longer needs one.

Her right shoulder blade shifts against the forearm he has clutched against it and he forgets to breathe, body immobilizing, eyes watching, waiting, yearning.

Her shoulder blade shifts deeper, its edge digging into his flesh, as her whole arm shifts. The movement is soft and tentative, words he never deludes himself into associating with her – but this is not delusion. Her face, too, is soft – or, at least, absent of its usual hardness – eyes big, lips parted with unformed questions and answers. Her bicep raises, elbow hinging, forearm stretching, and her splayed palm comes between their faces like rods of fleshed bones, obstructing his view just as his barred window in the colony did: all he can see of her face is her left eye and eyebrow, the arc of her nose, the right portion of her upper lip.

Her fingers curl forward into claws, towards him – then flex back, hesitating – forward again, but withdrawn once more – then the arrhythmic dance is repeated, the curve forward and the pull back –

Then her fingers light upon his lips.

They whisper like a newborn's touch across his face, shyly curious, exploring what has never been known – the way he did to her last night when she came to him – he sees her eyes narrow – but not in plotting – in considering – bewildered and adrift and burning and frightened and uncomprehending but still considering, still trying, still standing before him –

"Mr. Todd! Mr. Todd, I've found Johanna – the judge's got her locked in a madhouse – the place is a fortress, I've circled the walls a dozen times over – "

Nellie is gone from his arms before he even hears the jingle of the shop bell.

She is poised at the counter, hands engulfed in dough as she kneads and slams it repeatedly into the table, hips leaning to one side with eyes focused on her task, creating the perfect combination of leisured attention to her job, the perfect disguise. The errant lock of hair he had tucked behind her ear dances over her left eye, calmly defiant, as though it never left.

"Mr. Todd? I'm sorry, is this a bad time?"

Blinking, lowering his arms from their embrace of empty air to rest at his sides, Sweeney turns his attention away from the baker. "What is it, Anthony?"

"He has her locked in a madhouse," says Anthony. "I've circled the place a dozen times – it's a fortress. There's no way in."

"A madhouse," echoes Sweeney, falling into his pacing regime, eyes averted at all costs from his landlady: if he looks at her, he fears that he'll break. "A madhouse. A madhouse."

"Yes," says Anthony, his wide eyes tracking Sweeney's movements, "a madhouse."

Anthony looks the picture of madness himself as he stands there, Nellie thinks: teeth gnawing over his syllables, hands wringing together, purple trophies of sleepless nights dangling without triumph beneath his eyes.

She casts a look beneath her lashes towards Sweeney: he, by contrast, looks as though he has just found the Promised Land. She turns her gaze back to her pies immediately: if she meets his eyes, she fears that she'll break.

But averting her eyes does not mean she can avert her ears, and even though his words are hardly more than a breath, she hears them loud as thunder:

"I've got him."

"What?" says Anthony.

"We've got her," says Sweeney, louder.

His arms may hang at his sides, but his hands still scald with the heat of her skin, his elbows still bent to the contour of her body. He limbs shake as he paces, possessed by an inward fire burning him from the inside out – he was so close to reaching her – he was so close to reaching through all the shrouds and masks and smiles and finding the shivering, naked humanity underneath –

But he cannot dwell on it now. The moment is passed.

_What's dead is dead._

"We've got her," Sweeney repeats, and on his next pacing cycle in Anthony's direction, he comes to a halt inches away from the sailor, almost nose to nose. Anthony cranes his neck away, wary, but his feet remain where they are.

"Where do you suppose all the wigmakers in London get their hair?" Sweeney inquires, barreling forward when he receives only a bewildered shake of the head as a reply: "Bedlam. They get it from the lunatics at Bedlam. We shall set you up as a wigmaker's apprentice . . ."

He babbles on. He locks his knees to keep them from hinging and settling into their familiar rote of pacing; he locks his eyes to keep them from swinging to Nellie. He feels a bubble of pride: a year ago, he never would have been able to tame his agony and yoke it for another purpose. And yet here he is, yielding his façade as naturally as his razor.

The jingle of the shop bell as Anthony leaves draws Nellie's attention upward automatically. She curses herself and forces her eyes back to her dough – but before they can, her gaze meets and locks with Sweeney's.

"Fetch the boy," Sweeney orders her.

Nellie blinks at him, speechless. She does not know what she expected him to do – return to his soliloquy about living in the present, or stare at her with his usual vacantly lost look until she barked a direction at him, or merely shuffle out of the room – but she _does_ know that she did not expect him to issue a command. Especially not to her.

Has he already forgotten what just transpired between them? Not that she wants him to mention what just took place – God no, she'd far prefer if they never so much as grazed the subject of living and Lucy and forgetting ever again – and yet neither does she want him to forget . . .

_You're pathetic, Lovett. What happened to the woman in control of herself, smilingly dependant on nothing and no one?_

"I think you should just leave the poor boy alone," Nellie returns, suppressing a wince the instant the words flee her lips. _I think?_ Damn what she thinks! Her thoughts are God's law to him and should be spoken as such, not as a wishy-washy notion of any commoner.

Sweeney's eyes, hard and merciless as flint, do not even gleam at her.

"Fetch the boy," he demands.

She can't help it: she gapes. Just what makes him think he is the one with the power in their relationship? Moreover, where has he drawn this strength from? And why? Did she merely imagine those moments before Anthony came hurtling inside her shop? – _fingertips poisoning her skin, arms capturing her body, whispers stampeding her ears_ – because surely this cannot be the same man – surely this figure forged of cold control cannot be the fool who murmurs fantasies naively and strokes her cheeks softly as though she's something fragile, breakable, as though she's something worthy to hold . . .

_Why?_ her mind sputters repeatedly, uncomprehendingly, stupidly, like a dying man gasping his last breaths, hazily echoing his last words again and again to anyone who will listen without any longer understanding the meaning behind his own words, or what he hopes to gain from their utterance. _Why? Why? _

_Why?_

Sweeney's lips curl into the minutest of smiles, parting to answer her unasked question, reading in her eyes what she cannot articulate with her mouth, throwing her former words back into her face:

"Because, love," he whispers, "I've got to keep moving."


	9. With A Smile

After delivering Sweeney's request to Toby and seeing to it that he leaves Fleet Street, Nellie stitches herself together enough to march up the steps to his barbershop and demand to know what he is doing. She does not bother to wear a seductive countenance, or to delude him that he is in control in this household, as she usually does; her stitches are yanked together only tight enough for her to hold her scraps together, not to mask her true emotions. There is no point in continuing to try and delude him anyway: he's seen all there is to see of her. He knows her too well now, damn him – damn him for imprinting her spirit to his own, for learning more about her than anyone else ever has . . .

Damn her for allowing it to happen.

She does hold her face in an inflexible pose of mettle, a silent threat not to mention what transpired between them prior to Anthony's arrival in her pie shop. To her relief (for there is, after all, no longer any real threat behind the look), he doesn't mention it, and merely recites to her his plan: his daughter arriving tonight, his letter to Turpin telling him of this fact, his plot to lure the judge into his barber chair at last by telling him of Johanna's arrival. . . .

His voice emits from his mouth in a drone, but he can't extinguish the sparkle in his black gaze. His spark is infectious: it catches hold of her and worms right through her defenseless seams, infusing her blood, searing her dead heart like a hot poker.

Her mind swims as red spots erupt before her eyes – as plentiful and glorious as firecrackers, or constellations in the dark sky, or the blood that bleeds through his shirts and dots his bare skin every night – she feels as though she will crumple to the floor and float into the clouds all at once, head throbbing, heart throbbing, everything throbbing and spinning and _beautiful_ –

The judge. Here. Tonight.

"Good things come to those who can wait," whispers Sweeney in conclusion.

She tries to keep her face rigid. She isn't sure if she is successful.

For those first few moments of living with the knowledge that the judge is coming, Nellie is rendered incapable of anything. Once the knowledge settles in, becomes a part of her, she finds it no difficulty at all to descend the staircase and return to her baking, and even decides some hours later to break all social regularities and open shop on a Sunday evening. No customers turn up their noses at her laboring away on the day of supposed rest; indeed, it is one of the busiest nights she's ever had.

She chatters and sways and serves her way through the night, unconscious as ever of the jabber leaving her mouth, but no longer hoisting smiles upon her face: tonight, the smiles appear naturally.

_So this is what it feels like to be happy._

She doesn't chastise herself for her joy, as she typically does; certainly, she knows she is still not entitled to joy, not while Lucy lives on unavenged – but revenge as inevitable as this . . . the mere thought of victory on her tongue . . . it tastes so sweet, so pure, that it is the first time the entire year that she almost does not mind when she feels Sweeney's eyes upon her from above, studying her through his window as always, and has to flash him a smile. The first time she almost does not mind that one smile is not enough for him and that she has to do this at least a dozen instances more throughout the evening – despite the fact that she barely has a moment to breathe, much less look up for a smile.

It is the first time the entire year that she almost does not mind admitting her heart still beats.

She watches all possible entrance points to 186 Fleet Street like a vulture, giddily ravenous for her forthcoming meal. Her head spins a mite more slow with each passing minute that he does not arrive; her smiles appear on her face a little less often with every hour that remains unattended by her repast.

_Where is he? Is he not coming after all? Does his distrust of me outweigh his lust for Johanna? Did the letter not get delivered? Perhaps Toby gave it to the wrong person – or perhaps he opened it, figured out what's been going on with Sweeney and me's businesses, and is currently at the police station? Or what if . . .?_

_Crunch, crunch, crack,_ her boots grouse as they march over the gravel outside

_Scuff, scuff, _the carol of shoes as they ease across the wood panes of the pie shop.

_Snnnnick thud-thud,_ the beat of her feet slipping in a small puddle of blood and stumbling to catch the rest of her body.

_Thud, thud, thud, _the rumbling song of heels striking stone stairs as she climbs back up the steps ascending from the bakehouse, a freshly-heated tray of pies in hand.

_Crunch, crunch, crunch, scrape . . . crunch, whack, scuff . . . scuff, scuff, scuff, scuff . . . thud, thud, thud._

Then the shop is closed and the meat for tomorrow's pies is flayed, and Turpin is still nowhere in sight, still Sweeney has not alerted her of the judge's presence as he promised he would . . . but she must keep the song going, must not stop . . .

Her feet whirl blindly about her home: striding to windows to peer into the night, bounding to the opposite side of the room, pressing into the carpet to lower her body into a chair, stretching out but only to spring back up and pace again . . .

_Clack, clack, clack._

Finally, she finds herself reposing in the parlor, a pair of knitting needles in hand.

_Clack, clack._

When she becomes aware enough of her body to comprehend this, the needles have already started banging together, weaving what looks to be a scarf. She's not knitted in years, but it seems to be just what she needs tonight for her melody to continue.

_Clack, clack, clack, clack, clack._

Her lips curl into a smirk. The wool is a ruby red.

_You're just the picture of domesticity, eh?_

_Clack, clack, clack._

Shoes chafing against the carpet draw her attention upward, hand still furiously attending to their task.

"Toby," she exclaims as the lad comes wandering into the parlor. "Where you been all evening, love? We had quite the rush at dinner. Surely whatever Mr. T sent you out to do couldn't've taken this long."

"He sent me – out on an errand – yes," stammers Toby, shuffling his feet against the carpet, "and – and while I was out – "

"Ah, it's alright, love," says Nellie with a wink. "You don't have to share with me all the details of your life. We all need a bit of privacy, eh? Anyway," she continues without waiting for a reply, her knitting needles jabbering away, "look what I've got here. Isn't it a beauty? And guess who it's for?"

"Aw – coo, mum," says Toby, his mouth smiling but his feet still shuffling, "for me?"

She throws him another wink. "Wouldn't you like to know?"

Toby comes to sit next to her on the settee. Her needles twaddle together in vicious swipes as her fingers fly through the air.

_Clack, clack._

"Mrs. Lovett? Could I – say something?"

"Yes, darling?"

Whatever he desires to say, his words trip too much to make his message clear. She still is looking down at her knitting and not at him, but she can practically hear the way his lips are shuffling and shaking as his feet did seconds ago, stretching around syllables and sounds as though learning them for the first time:

"I – see – while I was out – "

"Didn't we just talk about this?" says Nellie, grinning down at her needles. _Clack, clack, clack, clack._ "I was only teasing you earlier when I demanded to know where you'd been, love." _Clack._ "You're certainly not shackled to this place." _Clack, clack._ "And so long as you continue to help me out most nights rather than gallivanting off on some adventure, I see no problem with you taking your leave every now and then – "

"Mrs. Lovett," says Toby, and his feet no longer shuffle but neither does his voice, "please let me talk."

Her hands slacken their needles; her mouth slackens its grin. She turns her head to the side and looks at him, her song forgotten. "What's wrong, Toby?"

He tailors his face into a smile. Her heart pangs. It is one thing for her to don her facades; it is entirely another for him to attempt the same. It is a poor attempt at a façade, to be sure – even the simplest of beings would see the quiver of his lips, the freckles standing in high relief against his too pale skin, the hands frozen and clawed around his knees – but it is an attempt nonetheless. He is not supposed to know what a façade is, much less be attempting his own. Not an innocent, not her boy. Not one she was supposed to save.

_You've failed again, Lovett._

"While I was out," says Toby, "I decided to stop by the workhouse, just for a look. And I realized – but for you, I'd be there now."

"Mmmm."

The smile relaxes into his face. Not even fourteen years old and he's already learning to sew himself together, giving no one a chance to look beneath the swaths of masquerading fabric and thread. "Seems like the good Lord sent you to me."

"Ah, love," she says, flashing him a smile, "I feel quite the same."

The Lord does not care enough to send her anything, she's always had to make her own way in this world, and He certainly wouldn't deliver anything good to her even if He did find her worthy of His attention – but, excepting that, she does feel quite the same.

"Listen to me, please," says Toby in earnest. "Y'know there's nothing I wouldn't do for you. Say – if there were a monster, or an ogre – or anything bad-like what was after you – why, I'd rip it apart with my bare fists, I would!"

"What a sweet child it is," says Nellie, her eyes flitting over Toby's head to pass through the doorway and to the windows in her pie shop: still no sign of that bastard . . . but he will come, he has to come, he shall, he must . . .

Toby looks away from her face for the first time, pushing his kneecaps together with his hands. "Or even if it was just a man . . ."

Her gaze snaps back to Toby. "A man, dear?" she repeats, her voice a good deal shriller than she means it to be.

"A man – what was bad – " his voice is shuffling again, but its earnest quality is growing, confidence swelling, loyalty intensifying, and when his eyes find hers, they deplete the room of all air " – and what might be luring you all unbeknownst into his evil deeds, like . . ."

She sculpts her face into solemn but mild interest, eyebrows slightly raised and mouth softly parted. Her hands, not as adept at masking as her face, begin to knit again.

_Clack clack clack clack clack._

"What's this?" Nellie asks him. "What're you talking about?"

Toby inhales, his eyes not wavering from hers. "Nothing's gonna harm you – not while I'm around . . ."

He pledges aloud the devotion written as clear as scriptures upon his face – as clear as scriptures, and as false.

Because it is too late. Because demons already have harmed her. Because they continue to harm her. Because she harms herself.

He continues speaking, the words pulsing forward faster and clearer as they go on, words she does not want to hear, especially as his meaning becomes plainer with each utterance – his meaning and his understanding . . . oh, he misunderstands much, to be sure – as if Sweeney could ever have the wit or the will to lead her about as she does him, to manipulate her motions to his own desires . . .

Nonetheless, Toby understands too much – and if unstopped, he'll run to the police. If unstopped, he'll have Sweeney arrested.

If unstopped, she'll never reach Turpin.

_The boy or the judge?_

The question is obvious. So is the answer – and she hates herself for it being obvious, hates that there is no struggle for the answer, hates that even though the choice pains her there is no hesitation to making the choice –

But it is obvious. And they both have to live with the consequences.

"Shhh, shhh, hush now, Toby," she whispers as she stuffs Pirelli's coin purse back into her bust and draws Toby against her. She feels their limbs trembling against one another but she can't tell from whose body the trembles originate. "Here – " she pulls them both onto the settee " – you just sit nice and quiet for a bit, next to me – that's right . . ."

She holds his head against her chest, her other arm secure around his back, and rocks him against her like an overgrown infant. Normally, he objects when she tries to coddle him. Tonight, he is silent. Shaking.

_The boy couldn't have been saved anyway. The boy is already broken. There is no going back. The judge, on the other hand . . . the judge can still die._

She repeatedly presents herself with this logic as she sits there, arms wrapped around Toby, rocking him against her chest. Logic is steady and constant, ever dependable, ever comforting, ever present. Like her metronome, beating through the long days and nights.

"How could you think such a thing of Mr. Todd?" she murmurs into his hair. "He's been so good to us. . . . Nothing's gonna harm you – not while I'm around . . ."

Her throat and her eyes feel as though they are on fire. It's an unfamiliar feeling. Reasoning that when something is on fire one must douse it with water, she tries to moisten the flames, swishing saliva down her throat and widening her eyes to make them water.

". . . nothing's gonna harm you, darling – not while I'm around . . ."

The burning only increases. Then she realizes that the burn is from she being close to tears. Then she remembers that water enhances burns, not quenches.

"Demons'll charm you with a smile, for a while," he replies, his voice quivering but never breaking, his arms tightening around her waist, "but in time – nothing can harm you . . . not while I'm around . . ."

She sits there, arms wrapped around Toby, rocking him against her chest, and silently cries for the first time in sixteen years.

xxx

"_Tooooby_! Where _aaaaare_ you, love?"

"Toby?" he barks behind her. "Toby!"

"Nothing's gonna harm you," she croons into the darkness sticky with human feces and sewage water and summer sweat, "not while I'm around . . . nothing's gonna harm you – darling – not while I'm around . . ."

Her voice trills and lilts over the deceased promises. She thinks her ears might bleed.

"Toby?" Sweeney calls, arm poised behind his back, hand closed in a fist. The blade pulses in his palm like as it did last time he was about to kill Turpin, thrumming in giddy anticipation of what is to come. And it will come this time – the judge is coming soon and nothing will stop him this time from murdering that bastard – and yet Sweeney is not there to greet him.

_Stupid boy. _

He grits his teeth. He's never begrudged Toby's residence in their home before. Oh, certainly he's felt a lick of jealousy when he sees Nellie ruffling the boy's hair with a hand or bruising the boy's forehead with a kiss, her eyes sparkling with genuine affection they never hold in the barber's presence – but it is completely irrational to envy her filial warmth for a thirteen-year-old whelp. Besides, simultaneous with the lick of jealousy – and larger – is one of loving remembrance and empathy: he recollects well how Nellie once desired to be a mother, when she still had desires other than revenge; he remembers well how Lucy's eyes sparkled with that same ethereal light when she held baby Johanna, that light that he sees now in Nellie's black gaze instead.

No . . . he can never begrudge the fact that Nellie can still care about someone, even if that someone isn't him.

Tonight, however, he does begrudge the boy. If Tobias Ragg had never invaded _their _home – and he refuses to think of it as Toby's home as well, refuses to acknowledge that they've both dwelled here a year now and thus should be entitled the same privilege of calling 186 Fleet Street a home – he would not be in the sewers right now. He would be upstairs in his shop, waiting for the judge, preparing for his demise and for her happiness . . .

"Demons'll charm you with a smile," sings Nellie, stepping with care over a puddle to avoid falling flat on her face, "for a while, but in time . . ."

Time. They do not have time. The judge will be here soon. She must dispose of Toby as quickly as possible before he runs to the police and destroys her last chance at vengeance.

Her throat still burns – no longer with fire, but with acid – not hot and flaming, but sour and bubbling, retching, knocking upward at the roof of her mouth –

_No. You made your decision, Lovett. You made it sixteen years ago. No turning back now._

"Perhaps you should go upstairs?" Sweeney suggests in a murmur.

She whirls on her heel so quickly that she loses her balance upon the slimy stones. She only manages to avoid falling into the rushing sludge by his hands seizing her shoulders and jerking her upright.

"Upstairs?" she hisses, wrenching herself free from his grip, and neither of them mentions that she did not say thank you. "Absolutely not – you mad? Whaddya think we're doing down here in the sewers – enjoying the view? We've got to find Toby before he runs to the law."

"Yes," Sweeney agrees, not ruffled in the slightest by her agitation. "I'll stay behind and find him while you wait for the judge in my shop – since you are to be the one to do the deed, it only makes sense that you go instead of me – "

"If Turpin sees me first, he'll turn right around," says Nellie flatly. "He doesn't trust me any longer. He's got to see you first – you've got a far better chance of re-earning his trust than I do." Her lips purse. "_You_ should go upstairs. I'll stay down here and – and finish this. Just stall the judge long enough for me to make it up there."

"But – " his eyes flail " – what about – you don't – are you sure you want to – sure you can – "

"What?" she snaps, impatient.

As mute as he was when he first returned to London, Sweeney removes his arm from behind his back and unfurls his fingers. The razor smiles like a pearl in the darkness.

"Of course," says Nellie, seizing the razor. "Why wouldn't I? Tob – this is a problem that's got to be taken care of, and since I can't wait for the judge myself, it only makes sense that I do what I can to get it done."

Sweeney's eyes trail her fingers as they grasp the razor, averting his gaze with a belated sense of modesty as she reaches inside her dress to tuck the blade between her breasts, his stomach knotting. For all her ease with her convictions that everyone is full of shit and deserves to die, and all her comfortable familiarity with hacking corpses to bits, she's never actually murdered someone herself – much less the one someone who doesn't deserve to die, but must to serve the greater good.

"Well?" says Nellie sharply. "What're you waiting for?"

Sweeney's eyes drop to his shoes. "Sorry. I'll go wait for him. I'll knock upon the floor three times when he comes." His eyes raise and flit across hers once more, then he nods and turns to leave.

Her heart jumps in alarm as she suddenly realizes how callously she's treated him these past few minutes – if she wants him to do her bidding, it won't do to have him upset with her. What if he sends Turpin away – or, worse, kills Turpin himself before she arrives, out of spite?

"Sweeney," she blurts out, the first time she's ever addressed him by his given name.

He stops and turns back to her. The irises and pupils of his eyes are invisible in this black hour of night, just as they were last night, but the whites gleam purer than the moon.

Her mind shuts down. She forgets why she called to him. She forgets that she even did call to him.

She forgets to remember anything but now, everything but this.

She strides forward until they are a breath apart, puts one hand against his shoulder, and rests a kiss upon his lips.

Two moments pass in which hearts forget to beat.

Then Sweeney draws away. He reaches out one hand to cradle the side of her face in his palm.

"I love you," he says.

He knows it's not the time to say it. But he's never found the courage to whisper it anywhere except within his heart and he suddenly fears that he never will find the time or the courage again, if not now.

"I know," she says.

He begins to walk backwards. His hand remains on the side of her face until his arm can stretch no further and is forced to drop to his side. Only then does he turn around, marching out of the sewers and out of her sight.

* * *

><p><strong>AN:** A mere two chapters to go, my dear readers!

Reviews are love.


	10. Fellow Spirits

Sweeney has never fully appreciated what a long trek Nellie Lovett makes each night down to her bakehouse and up to her shop – more than once, no less.

But he appreciates it now, appreciates it as the muscles in his legs tighten then relax, shifting beneath his skin, and it is only because he is so adept at pacing the length of his barber shop that he does not feel the burn. That must be why she does not complain either of the lengthy, steep-staired journey from the bakehouse to her shop either, for she too is a habitual pacer.

They both are so similar. So perfect for each other – or would be, if she could ever see that. But perhaps they are too perfect – too similar – too alike to ever be forces that create one another rather than destroy. They create one another in a fashion, of course – extolling the best and worst within each other, magnifying traits, manipulating steps, drawing out whispered words too raw to be said anywhere but the dark – but ultimately, they destroy each other.

_We give the most of ourselves to the thing that makes and breaks us . . . _

As he winds through her shop and starts up the stairs leading to his barber shop, a croaking but soft refrain draws him from his thoughts. He strains his ears to hear the words.

" – _he'll be coming soon now to kiss you, my Jo, my Jing –"_

_The judge?_

No – the judge's voice does not sound like that, so feminine and yet so hoarse. It must be some silly girl who's wandered in with a father in need of a shave. He curses under his breath; he does not have time for customers right now.

" – _bringing you a moon and a shoe and a wedding ring –"_

Jaw clenched, he mounts the remaining steps.

" – _he'll be coming here again, home again – AAAHHH!" _

The song turns to a shriek as he flings open the door and the girl whirls about to face him, cowering. It's not a girl, he sees now that she's turned to him, gritted teeth tightening, but that mad old beggar woman.

"Who are you?" he snaps. "What're you doing here?"

She raps the tips of her fingers together, hunching over her hands like a miser hoarding gold. She darts strange, sideways glances at him every now and then from a face tucked against her chest. "Evil is here, sir – the stink of evil, from below – "

If Sweeney does not have time for a customer, he most certainly does not have time for this. If the judge sees this beggar in here, then he will remain suspicious of the company Sweeney keeps and turn right around – then the hour he vowed the judge was due will never come – then she will never smile at him because she wants to and not because she feels she must –

"Out of here, woman," he snarls, striding to the window.

"She's the Devil's wife," the beggar rants, spinning lopsidedly on her heels to face him in a movement that absurdly reminds him of Nellie moments before, when she nearly lost her balance on the slick stones of the sewers. But he does not reach out to catch this woman as he did Nellie, so the beggar is forced to catch herself, stumbling a step before recovering. "She really is, sir. She with no pity in her heart . . ."

Fury kindles in his veins and explodes in spots of red before his eyes. How could she, how _dare_ she – Nellie is ten million times the woman this decrepit hag is – and she has the nerve to stand there and spout such falsities –

_For God's sake, Todd – you're going to let the words of a mad woman who doesn't even comprehend what she's saying get you riled? _

_Not as though her words about Nellie really are falsities, anyway, _spits up a nasty little voice in the back of his mind.

"Out," shouts Sweeney, yearning to silence both the beggar and himself, "out, I say!"

The woman takes two footsteps towards him, quickly, eagerly. Her chin lifts from its huddle against her chest to thrust her head outward and cast her face into the moonlight shining through the window: the eyeballs too large for their wrinkled sockets, the dirt and warts caked around the skin, the thinning hair sagging around the face.

Instinctively he recoils from her, head knocking against the panes of his window.

"Hey," she says, leering, looking faintly confused, "don't I know you, mister?"

"Mr. Todd!"

_Turpin._

His razor snaps open in his hand and slices into her throat.

It's over in less than an instant: his hand moving for his friend, the blade sliding forth, the cut bisecting her neck. Her life extinguishing.

He did not have any intention to kill her when he first saw her in his shop, despite the ease with which he could have done so. It was not out of any moral code or guilt that he had thought this. It was merely that Nellie did not require the sacrifices of innocents – and while this beggar woman certainly could not be called innocent (if her garbled, lusty nursery songs had any fact behind them), she could hardly be considered a part of the group who deserved death. Wrongs had been done to her in she becoming insane; she herself was not the culprit. Thus, Nellie would not care. Sweeney had no scruples one way or the other about killing men by the dozens, if it would satiate her – but what would be the point to a sacrifice that none required?

But when her presence threatened everything he and Nellie had worked for, he reacted.

Another instinctual move. An animal reaction. Preservation.

He stomps on the foot pedal and watches her plummet into the bakehouse. The trapdoor swings shut just as his shop door swings open.

Sweeney sheaths his dripping razor.

"Where is she?" Turpin demands. "Where is the girl?"

Sweeney eases a smile onto his face and strolls towards the judge, ensuring to step with his heels first as he treads over the trapdoor, creating three successive sounds, _boom boom boom_, trusting Nellie to hear his metronome and set herself to beat in sync. The beggar woman is forgotten.

"Down below, your honor," says Sweeney. "With my neighbor. Thank heavens the sailor did not molest her . . ."

He continues talking, voice flowing as easily as the Thames, wrapping Turpin in a soothing melody of false syllables as he draws him from the doorway and settles him into the barber chair. His uneasiness begins to rise as the minutes tick by and Nellie still does not appear. Comfortable as he has become within his façade, he will not be able to stall the judge forever . . .

"Pretty women . . ." Sweeney drawls, continuing to stir the lather as though he has all the time in the world, even as he notices Turpin drumming his fingers upon the arms of the barber chair.

"You're in a merry mood today again, barber," Turpin remarks, sounding torn between appraisal and irritation.

A merry mood? Yes, he should be merry, shouldn't he? This is the moment that he has waited, anticipated, needed for half a lifetime, and so what if Nellie is a little late? She will be here soon – and when she is here – with him – _'both, us, we, together, you and me,' she whispers in the dark as she trails hot fingers along his spine _–

_Focus, Todd._

"How seldom it is one meets a fellow spirit," Turpin murmurs, fully at his ease now, legs stretched out on the floor, shoulders slumping against the chair back, head lolling backwards, eyes closed, neck exposed . . .

_Shit, Nellie. Where are you?_

Sweeney swallows a rising knot of anxiety. "With fellow tastes – in women, at least."

"What's that?" Turpin half-mumbles and half-snorts, eyes opening, drawn from the fringes of slumber and consciousness: he is fully aware of reality now.

Sweeney freezes. So trained to keep his mouth frothing with syllables, he had disconnected his mind from his mouth practically since Turpin's arrival and begun to say whatever sprung into his mind, of sailors, of shaving, of women, of everywhere and nowhere and _dammit_ why, of all the habits to acquire from her, has he acquired the one most likely to plunge him into hot water? And where is she, the master chef, to pluck him out of the boiling pot – or, even better, turn off the heat?

"P-pretty women," says Sweeney with halting conviction, "you and I both . . . appreciate . . ."

Turpin raises an eyebrow at him. "Hmm – yes – so you've said . . ." He lingers over the words, eyes raking over Sweeney's face – then he seems to give up hunting whatever he hoped to discover in the barber's expression and closes his eyes again. "Well – how about you get on with that shave?"

"Yes," says Sweeney, "yes – of course."

He takes out one of his razors from his holster – and nearly drops it within the next instant: his hands are syrupy with sweat. Fumbling, pressing his blade between both palms, he shoots a glance at Turpin to see if he noticed: mercifully, the judge's eyes remain shut.

"But how about a pomade first, sir?" suggests Sweeney, rolling his friend between his palms, searching for the comfort and guidance she usually provides. She, however, is just as barren of ideas and consolation as he. "Your friend, the esteemed Beadle Bamford – he stopped by earlier this evening and quite enjoyed a nice pomade of the head before his shave – "

"No, no," Turpin dismisses, "a shave is all I need, thank you. Johanna will be here any minute, as you say. I can't waste time with frivolities."

"Surely a pomade is not at all a frivolity on a head as deserving of the finest – "

"Come now, barber," says Turpin, throwing open one eye. "Let's not waste my time again – get on with the shave."

His legs feel crafted of steel as he drags himself from his bureau back to the barber chair and the reposing Turpin. Thoughts dive through his mind, flickering in and out so fast he can barely catch them before they've fled again:

_not here she's still not here can't risk going to find her and Turpin leaving why isn't she here perhaps kill him myself lesser of two evils is to let Turpin die by my hand or let him walk free again maybe she found Toby maybe they're both with the police to turn me in no no she needs this just as much as I do but what should_

He shifts his grip on his blade so she rests solely in his right hand. She quivers like fire in his palm and slides around like water in his sweat.

He raises his arm into the air and lowers it towards Turpin and makes one long, smooth stroke along the judge's left cheek, swathing a clean patch of skin.

"About time," Turpin mutters, and closes his eyes.

The door flies open.

Never has the ersatz jangle of his shop bell sounded so beautiful – or so defiantly real.

"Do you mind, Mrs. Lovett?" Turpin sneers at the woman standing in the doorway. "Mr. Todd and I are rather busy at the moment."

Nellie's lips grow into a smile, eyes scintillating. Her dead eyes are alive. "I know, love. I won't be but a moment."

She strides into the room, her hand falling from the door to let it bang back into its frame, her massive skirts and petticoats crackling like smoke as they swoop across the floorboards. She does not cease her walk until she stands across from Sweeney, in front of the barber chair rather than behind – but she does not see him.

Turpin, though careful to conceal his disdain for the barber, makes no effort to do so in Nellie's presence. "I am again going to request that you leave, Mrs. Lovett."

"Still Mrs. Lovett, is it?" Nellie whispers, but not as though she is actually hearing his words, or her own. "I've attended your dinners, accepted your little trinket gifts, sprawled on your mattress – what's a woman got to do before she's on a first name basis with you, your honor?"

Sweeney recoils as fast and hard as he did under the sting of the whip in the colony. He never knew that Nellie had resorted to bedding Turpin to try and get her revenge, never realized how many and how extreme the methods of vengeance she had exhausted were, and – and he hates to admit it but this sting is the worst – he never imagined she had slept with another man since her husband. What else had she tried in those interim years? What else of her did he remain ignorant of?

_And why are you surprised that you didn't know, Todd? You never knew her._

No. He knew her – he _knows_ her – better than anyone. That's why she's so close to breaking. That's why she's so close to being whole.

"Manners, Mrs. Lovett," Turpin drawls. "And it's hardly proper for a woman to observe a shave."

Nellie's grin widens, hollowing her cheeks. "Who said anything about observing, love?"

The disdain in the curl of Turpin's lip and the shine of his eyes mingles with something else: suspicion. He straightens himself in the barber chair. "I'm afraid I don't – "

"Of course, you're quite fond of letting others observe, ain't you?" says Nellie, her anger waxing. She leans towards him. "Letting 'em observe – making 'em observe – while you dominate over 'em – "

Turpin makes to rise. "I don't need to listen to this – "

Her hands shoot out like two simultaneous gunshots and pin his shoulders back into the chair. Perhaps Turpin is too stunned by this abrupt, aggressive behavior to react, or perhaps the force of Nellie's fury has endowed upon her unparalleled strength, because Sweeney is certain that any other day Turpin would far outmatch her in physical prowess and she would already be flung into the far corner of the room.

"That's what you did to her, isn't it?" Nellie snarls into his face. "Making her observe your grand manor and your hoity-toity guests and your fancy costumes and your overwhelming power, making her observe while you pinned her down and grinned and took – "

Either recovering from his shock or gaining his own rage to draw strength from, Turpin shoves himself to his feet. Nellie's hands remain at his shoulders, shoving and slapping, but she might as well have feathers for fingers for all that her efforts contribute.

"I don't have any idea what you're talking about," Turpin informs the tornado of anger that persists in pushing against him. "But you, my dear, have once again crossed the line."

Turpin steps towards the door, thrusting Nellie to one side and sending her slamming against the floor – and Sweeney ignites.

With a growl, he seizes Turpin from where he stands behind the barber seat and thrusts him back into the chair. He locks his fingers around Turpin's biceps as Turpin thrashes about, demanding for release, snarling names and threats that Sweeney pays no attention to. His heart roars in his ears. The razor, still clutched in his hand, now presses into both Turpin and Sweeney's flesh as they wrestle for control, the silk of the former's shirt and the sweat of the latter's skin making the metal even more slippery than ever before.

Nellie recovers, springing to her feet and bending towards Turpin. Her ashen cheeks glow with burgundy fire; her dark pupils dance with white fire. She looks sick with fever, zealous with religion, animated with food of a taste beyond anything ever prepared for human pallets. She looks alive – and Sweeney almost wishes she didn't.

"Don't have any idea what I'm on about, d'you, your honor?" she inquires in a soft voice. "Let me clue you in. The years no doubt have changed her since that night – but then again, the face of a commoner – the face of just another woman you had to claim for your own – is not particularly memorable – "

Turpin's flailings end. His neck twists around to look at Sweeney. A light of horrible comprehension dawns in his eyes.

"Benj – "

The name dies unfinished on his lips and he whips his head back around to Nellie.

"Lu – all this is about – with you all these years and – then – all this has always been about – Bark – "

"Say her name," Nellie hisses, the veins in her neck pulsing, undulating like snakes. "Say her name."

"Lucy Barker – "

"_Lucy Barker!"_ Nellie screams, and then the razor crushed between Turpin's silk and Sweeney's skin is in her palm instead, and the blade reveals itself with a _snnnick_, and her arm raises into the air –

And the razor bites into Turpin's throat.

The sinews rip open. Blood splatters over Turpin's front and down Nellie's hand. Turpin's head falls backwards and smacks against the rim of the chair.

It's an inexperienced cut, Sweeney can tell that even from his angle standing behind Turpin: a diagonal, choppy slice that makes more of a show of splitting flesh than letting blood.

But it's still working. He's still bleeding, gasping. Dying.

Turpin wheezes a breath through both nostrils and the void at his throat. His eyes loll backwards into his skull then out again, a final struggle for domination. He cannot win, and he knows he cannot win, but still he struggles, still he refuses to accept defeat – and Sweeney's heart plunges into his feet with the wildly absurd and yet wildly logical thought that perhaps Nellie and Turpin aren't as dissimilar as Sweeney would like to think.

The feel of wetness splattering over his face yanks him from these thoughts. He glances up: Nellie's made a second slash with the razor, no less awkward than the first, but deeper. As he watches, her hand descends into the ripped flesh a third time – then again – and again, with a thirst that refuses to be slaked by any amount of liquid rubies –

There's no need to hold fast Turpin's body to the chair anymore, no chance he could possibly escape, yet Sweeney remains clinging to the judge's arms, must remain clinging. His friend dashes in and out of the air under the guidance of Nellie's hand, more reckless than she behaves under the guidance of his own palm, ripping jagged cuts that fan blots of blood wildly in every direction. Her face is covered in the blots, and he imagines from the dampness on his skin that his is too. Still her hand shows no signs of resting, of its thirst being quenched . . .

Just when he thinks she will never stop, she does.

Nellie stumbles a step backwards, almost too exhausted to any longer muster the energy required to stand; she gazes at Turpin with wide eyes, almost unable to believe that limp, tattered excuse of a man is really the vulturine judge, or that she created those tatters.

Her arm and his razor fall slack at her side, her feet stagger several paces to the side, her heel slams against the foot pedal – and Sweeney's trapdoor is utilized for the final time as Judge Turpin tumbles into the bakehouse and disappears from view.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: **Reviews are love.


	11. Enough

Blanketed in silence, Nellie sinks to the floor. The blots of Turpin's blood have begun to drip and run together on her skin: rather than dots of scattered locations and sizes, they now appear a spider web of crimson threads sewn across her face. She holds the razor in cupped palms and stares down at it with the affection and worship Sweeney feels for them. His heart swells.

"You – you did it," he says, because he thinks he must say something since she, for once, is not.

_We did it,_ he thinks._ We did it. You could not have done it without me. Please notice. Please care._

Nellie provides no answer, no movement. The swell of his heart contracts. Turpin's death was not supposed to steal what little life still dwelled within her. It was supposed to revive her life, kindle what few sparks remained, animate her into someone who still needed something beyond revenge, still loved what dwelt above ground and was not buried ten feet beneath . . .

_You knew this was coming. You knew she would never love you. Don't let yourself be hurt over what you knew could never be. _

_But it's not over. Turpin's the one who's dead, not her – and not me._

He dares to sit himself beside her, thigh to thigh, her voluminous layers of lace and silk pooling over his trousers. She does not stir.

Sweeney reaches into her lap and lifts the razor from her hand into his own, his fingertips brushing against the inside of her palm. "They deserve to rest now," he murmurs in explanation.

When she continues to be stolid, he achingly turns away, focusing instead on the one friend he has always been able, unfailingly, to depend on: for support, for guidance, for affection. For listening even when he has nothing to say. For being there.

"Rest now, my friend," he says to his blade. "Rest now, forever . . . sleep now the untroubled sleep of the angels . . ."

She gives him a sterling smile accentuated scarlet to show that she understands and appreciates his gesture. A final cradle to his chest, then Sweeney lays the razor, blade unsheathed, upon the upholstery of his barber chair.

"We should go look for Toby."

Sweeney starts and turns his head sideways to Nellie. She smiles at him, eyes clear and focused, dancing with their usual medley of care and cold clarity.

"D'you hear me, love?" she teases, waggling the fingers of her right hand in front of his face. He watches the liquid red lattice on her skin stretch and contract with the movement, hypnotized. "We've got to find Toby before he runs to the law. Not that it really matters, I s'pose. We'd find our way out of prison somehow, you and me. But I'd rather not have the experience; I don't much fancy cramped and dirty spaces. Well, c'mon, let's get a move on."

"Yes," agrees Sweeney, blindly taking her hand when she offers it out to him, unable to understand why she laughs as she pulls him to his feet.

She races down the steps from his barber shop and into her own establishment, nearly pulling Sweeney's arm out of its socket in her haste. It's not that she's worried about Toby running to the law. She's not worried about anything at the moment, truth be known. For once, the world is balanced on its axis, spinning steadily and smoothly just as it is meant to.

_You're alive. You're alive again. You've been reborn, or regrown from the trampled seeds of your feeble life before, or maybe you were never really dead but just didn't know you were alive, or . . . or maybe you're just this. Maybe you just are._

She breaks out into another fit of giggles and can't find any words to explain why when Sweeney searches her with a swift, piercing look.

The demon couple wind their way through her shop and living quarters, finally reaching the steps leading into the bakehouse to resume the hunt for Toby.

Despite her lack of worry, she does want to find the boy, if only to confirm that he is alive too. Now that the judge is gone, after all, there is no choice to be made. Now that the judge is gone, Toby can remain with her – if he so chooses, that is. She doubts the boy will want to remain with her after she nearly breaking her promise to never harm him –_ nearly breaking? don't kid yourself, Lovett, you still broke it even if you didn't follow through with the break: you broke it the instant you made the choice to break it _– but neither can this bother her. Let the boy refuse her love, let him go running to the authorities and throw her in jail – what does she care? Whether she is in jail, or Botany Bay, or her shop, or halfway across the world, Alexander Turpin will be dead and Lucy Barker will be avenged –

And Nellie Lovett will be alive.

As they descend the stone steps, Nellie squints vaguely at the pile of bodies positioned beneath the trapdoor within the ceiling above. Having been in this human-pie business for close to a year now, she's become adept at estimating with a sweep of her eyes how many carcasses she'll have to plow through each night. Tonight's stack looks taller than two bodies should look – almost as though there is a third.

But that's ridiculous. Bamford plus Turpin equals two, not three, and they were the only ones who died tonight. Bamford does have a good deal of meat on his bones; likely his extra flesh accounts for the pile's extra height.

Nellie lowers herself down the remaining steps, moaning in the back of her throat as her knees ache, and proceeds towards the conglomeration of dead bodies –

And becomes as paralyzed and unable to control her muscles as the corpses on her floor.

Only for a moment does she allow this to last. Only for a moment does she allow her control to die.

Then she springs forward, heart still stuttering like broken carriage wheels but mind plowing forward, determined to plow forward, determined to keep moving and not let him know and not let her strings unravel, not again, not now. She knows they will unravel, it's only a matter of time before they unravel and abandon her entirely this time without the slightest hope of repair, but not now – not when for the first and last time of her life she is happy. Just this one more happy moment is all she wants for her sixteen desolate years – no, not now – she will keep moving, she will move, she must move, she is moving, she is _oh no oh God Lucy I'm so_ –

"What are you doing?" Sweeney asks as Nellie seizes Lucy's wrists and begins to drag her out from under Bamford's legs and to the oven.

"Just want to keep moving, love, that's all," Nellie trills, wincing at the high sharp notes her voice makes in trying not to crack. She maneuvers herself so that her back is to the barber, blocking the body in her hands from his sight. "We've got lots to dispose of before the authorities come running tonight, since we can safely assume Toby's gone running to the law by now – I suggest we clean up quick as we can so he's got no facts to support his words. Unless you think that maybe we'd be better off to just desert Fleet Street altogether and – "

"Leave the bodies to me," says Sweeney from behind her.

She pretends not to hear him.

_If he sees that it's Lucy he killed and not just any woman from off the streets he'll feel horrible and hurt and angry and then –_

_Then – what, Lovett? The only reason you didn't tell him about Lucy still being alive before was because you needed him to help you reach your goal. And he did. What harm could it cause now to tell him that she lives?_

_You monster. Precisely for that reason: She no longer lives. She_ lived_._

He lays a hand on her shoulder and she jumps like a lashed horse. Her chin twists over her shoulder and she sees him looking at her, eyebrows drawn in perplexion.

"Leave them to me," he repeats, softer, fingers still on her shoulder, gesturing with his other hand to the bodies. "Open the door."

His gentle touch demolishes what little control she still possessed. Her head joins the stutter of her heart, shaking back and forth, each movement so tiny and quick that her skull practically vibrates upon her neck.

His eyebrows press closer together, a nearly continuous line. "Open the door, Nellie." Lugging these bodies to the oven is the least he can do for her, after all; he knows her back and knees are both in poor condition. Not to mention the fact that tonight she finally slaughtered the man she's been aching to sink her teeth into for nigh on sixteen years. Obtaining momentous goals of that nature would frazzle anyone's nerves.

Cold and numb as her corpses, Nellie's feet stammer to the oven and her hands open the door.

Sweeney bends over to grasp the body of the beggar woman Nellie had been dragging across the floor, not that Nellie had made it all that far, poor thing: but he shall not pity her any longer, he shall not need to – he shall not need to pity her or himself – not when they're about to leave all this behind and start anew. Certainly they cannot be reborn from the ashes like a phoenix, or given salvation like a follower of God: they have descended too far into the charred ruins of sin for either to ever be possible. But it will still be a new life, a new start, and even if they cannot truly possess happiness at least they will be content . . . at least they won't have to don facades of happiness any longer . . . at least they will live together . . .

'_Think how snug it'll be underneath our flannel, when it's just you and me and the English Channel . . . by the sea . . . you and me, Mr. T . . . you and me . . .'_

Nose already submerged deep in the briny, Sweeney grasps the wrists of the beggar, pulling the carcass out from underneath Bamford and out from the shadows.

As Nellie opens the oven door, a shaft of amber light slashes across the floor and over the beggar.

His hands drop to his sides and his feet reel backwards as a cry cleaves from his throat:

"_Oh no!"_

His knees give out from beneath him. They meet the ground with a brutal kiss that sends tremors throughout his whole body. He doesn't feel it. "Oh my God . . ."

His hands lower to the floor. He crawls slowly, achingly, every muscle straining to drag him across the floor like a base animal; it does not occur to him to stand and walk on two legs.

He crawls until he reaches her. His wife. The woman who rose from her grave – or never resided there, apparently . . . until now. Until his hand sent her there.

"Don't I know you – she said . . ."

It shouldn't hurt this much. He doesn't love Lucy – he feels affection for her, certainly, enough to make his heart twinge should something afflict her – but not love. Never love.

And he has thought Lucy dead since he returned to London. So now that she really is – well, shouldn't he be used to the idea? Should it really make a difference if she died sixteen years ago or tonight?

But it did make a difference. It does. He may not love Lucy, and he may have thought her dead all this time, but it doesn't change the facts that make his heart throb and ache worse than hell: that he killed his own wife. That he destroyed a human undeserving of death purely to bring a smile to the lips of the Devil's wife.

And the fact that throbs and aches the deepest, the cruelest: that his baker, his love, his life betrayed him. She told him Lucy was dead. She lied to him to ensure that his loyalty to Lucy did not interfere with his loyalty to her, as it had when he was Benjamin. She fed him falsities and fabrications without a single thought to the consequences, the damage – his damage – stringing him along with lilting promises of a beautiful, shared tomorrow – and of course he knew he should not believe her promises, knew he should not delude himself into believing her, yet had done so regardless – had known this from the beginning, so it should not be a surprise, it should not cause him to smart and shake and double over in agony –

But it did. It does.

Because this has shattered the delusion ruthlessly, irrevocably:

There is no future for them. There never was one. He would have kept one for her – would have stood against sands and storms and time itself to provide that beautiful, shared future for Nellie – but she never would have taken it from him. All she needed him for was her singular purpose. Once that ended, as it has ended now, it didn't matter how many lies she had spun or facades she had worn. It didn't matter how many fragmented pieces she had torn his heart into.

Because she would be victorious. Not happy – never happy – she could not be happy; that had been a lie too. But victorious.

So this is it, then. This is where it ends. With he pulverized, and she triumphant, and neither of them happy but at least she is still whole. She remains alive and able to live as those who are alive do, alive just as he wishes her to be.

_No_ – _as I _wished_._

He lifts his head and his eyes find the baker's. She is stationary, stock-still, hand frozen to the heat of the oven handle.

"You knew she lived," he says.

Nellie removes her hand from the oven door. Throws on a smile that feels more forced than it should. For God's sake, what's she still doing forcing smiles? This happiness flowing through her veins is as real as the blood ebbing right alongside it – and yet it feels diminished. Damn him for daring to take away her long-overdue joy.

Damn her for allowing him to.

"I was only thinking of you," she simpers.

His eyes flash, but not with fire: with grief. "You lied to me," he whispers, desperate to make her understand his pain, the torment of her betrayal, despite knowing she cannot.

Desperate to give her one last chance despite knowing she does not deserve it.

"No no, not lied at all – now I never lied," says Nellie, her propensity to babble returning once more. "Said she took a poison, she did, never said that she died – poor thing – she lived but it left her weak in the head . . ."

She doesn't know what she's saying anymore. Anything – nothing – whatever keeps her mouth moving and her control in place, but her heart is still stuttering like broken wheels over pavement and her mind is beginning to as well. Her eyes remain locked on Sweeney even as he bends his head and begins murmuring to Lucy, softly touching her face and stroking her hair the way Nellie never permits him to do with her.

Her heart gives a particularly high jump that rams into her voice box and forces her words to a halt for a moment in realization: if all this – if her ultimate goal of vengeance – had truly been for Lucy, as Nellie always claimed, then she would not have allowed Lucy to continue wandering the streets once she had made a bit of money off her human-pie enterprise . . . then she would have taken Lucy in, or provided enough money for a hospital . . . then she would have cared for and fretted over and dwelt on Lucy rather than on Turpin . . .

_What the hell is this, Lovett – remorse? You did what you had to do – what you _could_ do. Lucy was beyond help. Spending time trying to heal her wouldn't have done anything. You did what you could and what was best. You avenged her. You brought her justice._

Sweeney trails his fingertips along the matted yellow locks of Lucy's scalp, the ruptured sores of her forehead, the cracks of her lips, the warts underneath her jaw – the bloodied slit of her neck.

". . . Lucy . . . I've come home again . . . Lucy . . ."

He whispers to her softly even though she cannot hear, even though he never does anything but whisper softly to women who cannot hear. Even though it does no good, it is all he is good for.

". . . oh my God . . ."

God doesn't do any good either, but so long as he is calling to people who cannot hear, why not add Him to the list?

Red dances in front of his eyes. A want – a need – burns in his veins. The need is familiar, and yet unfamiliar too – familiar because he knows it requires a blood sacrifice – unfamiliar because each rise of this need is typically performed in Nellie's name . . . and yet it's a ritual he's come to depend on as well, for reasons that have nothing to do with her, for his own survival. For his own pretense that he is still alive. A need to hurt. A need to destroy another in order to create himself.

". . . Lucy . . . what have I done . . .?"

He hardly knows what he's done, or what he's doing.

But he knows what he will do. As he rises to his feet, as he hears the sound of her dawning footsteps and her voice swelling in volume as she nears, as his mind shakes and the debris of his heart shakes but his hands remain steady, he knows what he will do.

"Mrs. Lovett," he cries out, and whirls about on his heel to face her.

She draws in a hissing breath through her teeth and takes two steps backwards.

The ache in his fragmented heart increases tenfold – but aloud, Sweeney finds himself laughing: Is Nellie Lovett – master puppeteer who manipulates others with ease; dominator of emotions with never a single real feeling passing over her face; wife of the Devil who has been to the very bowels of hell and is not surprised or scared of any horrors, having seen them all – is Nellie Lovett actually afraid of _him_, a bleeding little nobody of a runaway convict?

"Mrs. Lovett, you're a bloody wonder," he declares with a grin, striding towards her, "eminently practical and yet appropriate as always . . ."

Nellie stares at him, uncomprehending, feet backpedalling. What is he doing? What is he talking about? One minute he's slumped on the floor cradling his wife to his chest – and the next he's flattering her? Is this an act? But he's not and never has been a good enough actor to pull off such quick costume changes – right? What would be the purpose to an act, anyway? Or –

"Mrs. Lovett," says Sweeney, his smile widening, settling comfortably into the crevices of his face like a well-worn sweater, "how I've lived without you all these years, I'll never know!"

His smile drops suddenly, his eyes observing how she retreats from him. "No, come here, my love," he soothes her, moving closer. "Not a thing to fear, my love . . ."

She continues to draw away from him, step by step by step, _thump_ by _thump _by _thump_, trying to find her metronome of safety, of comfort,_ thump_ by _thump_ by _thump_, drown herself in its familiarity, its rote, _thump_ by _thump_ by –

Her back hits the wall.

"What's dead is dead!" he proclaims, the words clanging loud and boisterous against the stones.

He grasps her hands, pulls her body flush against his, and begins to lead her in a waltz about the room. She's too confused to insist on taking the lead herself, as she usually does – and, truth be known, too relieved. Never before has she relinquished control without a fight – but oh, it feels good not to think, not to worry about guiding where her steps will lead, and where she must lead his steps, and what locations she must lead them to, not to worry about pressing a smile onto her face all the while . . .

She's not sure what he's saying as he whirls her about the room, and she's not sure if she's replying or not – but that's a relief too, not having to listen, or even pretend to. She lets her head loll against his shoulder and her feet be guided by his.

His eyes flash at her again, as they did when he knelt beside Lucy after she told him that she was only thinking of him when she lied – but this time, it is not a flash of grief: it is of fire.

_Fire,_ she thinks without being able to think through her haze of unthinking, of unfeeling, of surrender.

_Fire,_ she thinks, his smile hardening.

_Strength_.

His teeth gritting beneath the smiling lips.

_Control._

Amber light flickering and fading and flickering again over his face, illuminating, getting brighter than before as they twirl about.

_Heat_.

His hands tightening on her waist.

_Heat_ . . . _so much heat, so hot –_

– _oh God no _–

Then she is being hurled through the air and her body is falling and the heat is intensifying and heightening all around her –

When she opens her eyes, she is crumpled against the ground of the bakehouse.

She stays in her huddle for a moment – nose pressed into the grime of the stones, vision obscured by the darkness. She stays huddled, and with limbs awkwardly placed, and with body aching from the slap against the ground, and with heart hammering in her throat – but unadorned by flames. Whole.

Slowly, she presses her hands against the floor and pushes herself into the crouch of a lioness, silently taking in her surroundings, waiting for the opportune moment to pounce upon her prey.

The oven sits less than a foot from where she lies, door still wide open with flames burning high, waiting, beckoning. At the far end of the room, bathed in intermittent lashes of lights and shadows, kneels Sweeney. Lucy is held to his chest, her hair shrouding his face. His body shaking.

Nellie sits and watches him for a long time. At last, she tenses her muscles in preparation to spring from her crouch – but not to pounce upon her prey. She sees no reason to pounce.

She sees no prey.

Shifting herself onto her palms and knees – it does not occur to her to stand – she crawls across the room to him, an arrhythmic metronome of rustling skirts and callused palms sliding against stone. He does not look up as she approaches, nor when she settles herself in front of him almost knee to knee, but she has no doubt that he knows she is there, noisy as the many layers of her dress are.

They stay like that for innumerable minutes, kneeling, mute: Sweeney shaking and crushing Lucy to his chest; Nellie silently still and for once completely comfortable with silent stillness, no longer requiring motion or song to survive, existing to the pulse of no metronome.

Finally, he raises his head from Lucy's hair. His eyes are red but dry. His body racks with the sobs he will not or cannot cry.

"Why didn't you kill me?" asks Nellie simply.

Lucy's corpse jerks closer to his body. Nellie watches the muscles in his arms tighten around her fragile form and wonders if her bones might shatter.

"Because I couldn't," replies Sweeney simply.

Neither barber nor baker can cling to a façade anymore. They're both raw and naked and unclothed tonight, and they cannot pretend differently. Not here, at least, not now. Not with each other.

"I'd deserve death," says Nellie, her voice neutral, matter-of-fact.

His eyes close. "I couldn't," he repeats.

She sighs and shakes her head. "Love makes people do some really stupid things – and prevents them from doing a lot of smart ones."

With effort, he parts his eyelids and looks at her. "So does a lack of it."

Her thoughts are as scattered as poppies in a field, springing up without rhyme or reason, pushing against each other in a futile attempt to create space in the earth for more. She feels torn, ripped apart at the seams again, threads and fabrics all puddled around her with only a few still clinging on. She feels satisfaction, completion, vindication – and perplexion, disquiet, heartache . . . and some other emotion that she does not want to place . . .

She looks at Sweeney, then at Lucy, then back to Sweeney, and she finds her mind echoing the question she dimly heard him asking of his wife as he nestled her against his chest:

_What have I done?_

She hardly knows what she's done, or what she's doing.

But she knows what she will do. As she unfurls Sweeney's grip from Lucy, as she gently touches the other woman's face for the last time before laying her body to the side, as her mind and her mouth remain quiet and her hands remain steady, she knows what she will do.

Nellie reaches for the holster around Sweeney's waist and draws out the two razors he keeps there.

She places one in his palm, keeping the other in her own. Her gaze remains locked on his all the while.

His eyes flash for the third time this evening, not with fire or grief this time, but a bolt of agonized comprehension.

"What are you doing?" he asks her, even though she knows that he knows what she's doing.

Without thinking, Nellie smiles. "Well, I think we've both learned by now that we're much stronger together than apart, wouldn't you say? Get a lot more done when we partner up, you and me . . . find skills and strength we never knew we had before."

Sweeney shakes his head, eyes sorrowful – but not dissenting. "You don't need to do this, Nellie."

Nellie shakes her head in return. "No, love, actually – I do."

She unsheathes the blade of the razor in her palm, turning it between her fingers to admire the firelight scintillating across its sheen.

"See, like you told me," she continues, looking up from the silver and into his eyes, "life is for the alive. And much as we might like to pretend otherwise, you and me – well, we've never been alive. Not in this world, at least."

She crawls across the short distance between them and settles into his lap. As always, he contours himself to her at once, her shoulder leaning into his chest, his arm wrapping around her back.

"So maybe you and me'll find what we need elsewhere," whispers Nellie, resting one arm across his shoulders, fingers and razor handle kissing the back of his neck.

He looks at her and says nothing.

She does not think this is defeat – and even if it is, she does not care – but she truly does not think it is, by any definition of the word. It is merely accepting what she never could before.

She runs her fingertips over the curve of his forehead, the arch of his nose, the line of his jaw, as though seeing him for the first time. She might have been able to love him, she thinks to herself. In another time, in another place, in another life, she might have loved him. But time is up, and other places are nonexistent, and there is no other life for either of them.

So this is it. This is all they leave with.

Perhaps it is enough.

He rests a kiss upon her lips, soft and intimate. For the first and last time, she lets him. Then he pulls away.

Eyes never wavering, hands never shaking, she wraps her arm around the back of his neck, and he wraps his around hers, and they both rest the sharp edge of silver friends against each other's throats.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: **. . . please don't hate me?

But even if you do now hate me, I would like to give a big thank you to everyone who has read this story. To those loyal readers who reviewed every single chapter without fail; to those who dropped a review in my beloved feedback collection once or twice; to those who offered phrases of intense flattery; to those who were not afraid to criticize me (because, seriously, I love being criticized: how else will I ever improve, after all?); even to those of you who never left a review but nonetheless drove up my stats by incredible numbers (this fic received nearly 4000 total hits!). You are all awesome.

I know I say this all the time, but I really do thrive on feedback. I will never know what to change about my writing or what to keep the same if I never hear firsthand what you all like and dislike, after all. So, no matter what you thought of this final installment, or the story as a whole, I would love it if you could drop me a line (or a few lines, or a paragraph, or a novel . . . whatever ;]) to let me know your opinion.

Lastly, if the fact that this story is now over has sent you into the throes of despair, fear not! My career as a Sweeney fan-fiction author is far from complete. I am currently posting updates to my Sweeney Todd novel, _Death is for the Alive_, in which Sweeney and Nellie attempt to navigate through the afterlife. If we count time spent plotting, this story is a WIP of nearly four years, and is thus affectionately known as both The Little Monster and The Baby. I am also currently wrapping up a series of Toddvett/Sweenett one-shots (_Burgundy Velvet_) and two drabble series, one Toddvett (Of Rolling Pins and Rubies) and one all-things-Sweeney (Moments).

And I do believe that is all. Thank you again, dear readers, for sticking out this journey with me. I hope you enjoyed the ride.


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